


The Seventh Endmost Vision

by Runeless



Category: Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII, Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: A-Copies, Adopted Children, Aerith was a SOLDIER, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe- Aerith is Evil, Alternate Universe- Sephiroth is Good, Alternate Universe- Tifa Lockheart is a SOLDIER, Amnesia, And So Much More, BAMF Tifa Lockhart, Bad Parents, Barret Wallace - Freeform, Blast and Vicks, Body Horror, Bugenhagen - Freeform, Cloud has the masamune, Cloud is not, Cloud the Cook, Company man, Corel Cooking, Cosmo Canyon, Culinary Differences, Cultural Differences, Doing Zangan proud, Dr. Hollander - Freeform, Dr. Lucrecia Valentine, Elena the Bottomless Pit, Elmyra Gainsborough - Freeform, Evil Aerith, Except on the moral stance, F/F, F/M, Gen, Good Sephiorth, He's a, I have done it, If you recognize the Alpha-Leviathan, It's some good shit, Jessie and Biggs, Just not in the way anyone assumed, Keep track of that! I'm using the rumors, Losing your hometown sucks, Masamune, Midgar Food, Nibelheim, Nibelheim Food, Note he wanted to take her last name but she liked Valentine too much, PTSD, Red Lions, SOLDIER Tifa, Sane Sephiroth (Compilation of FFVII), Secrets, Sephiroth has his shit together too, Sephiroth in Overalls, Sephiroth the Farmer, Some of them anyway, Still technically the leader of Avalanche, The Before Crisis Turks!, The Mystery Ninja, The New Turks!, The Past, They're mentioned - Freeform, Tifa Lockhart is a SOLDIER, Tifa's Students, Tseng - Freeform, Vincent Valentine's wife, Vincent doing secret government work, Who is Certainly Not Hiding Any Secrets, Wutai Food, Yuffie the Waitress, agent man, and, but he is a good boy, cheap hooch, elfe - Freeform, everywhere, good parents, he is the best, is an asshole, mental trauma, mothers and sons, no sir, secret, secret agent man, that poor dog, the war - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:53:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 25
Words: 132,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24453226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runeless/pseuds/Runeless
Summary: In another version of Gaia, Tifa Lockheart, 1st Class SOLDIER, finds herself standing at the fulcrum of the world.A world familiar and strange both; of AVALANCHE led by Rufus Shinra, of Lucrecia and Vincent triumphant.  Of Aerith Valentine, and plans much more selfless than dreams of becoming a god- and much more dangerous.( An AU of a different blend; the power of compromise, of making choices, of holy and unholy, and what it means to be human.)
Relationships: That's a Secret for Now!
Comments: 163
Kudos: 115





	1. Chapter 1

**The Seventh Endmost Vision**

**Chapter One**

**SOLDIER of Misfortune**

Tifa leaned against the side of the train car, eyes closed. Beside her, the man in the tattered white coat worked on his arm; his left arm had been replaced with a shotgun at some point, and from the glimpses Tifa had caught of his real arm as he fiddled with the contraption, the loss of his arm had had not happened in a surgical setting. Scars and patterns reminiscent of lightning burns radiated out from the lost hand.

Next to them on the train were the other members of his little terrorist cell. _Avalanche_. Tifa had to admit, the name was catchy, and reflected their methodology well. She had no idea why they wanted to attack a Shinra reactor; seemed a suicide run, in her opinion.

They didn't seem exactly the kind of people who could _do_ such an operation, either; there was a redhead among them who couldn't stop flirting and joking to save his life, the bald guy seemed to be mute, and the young blonde woman with them reminded Tifa way too much of herself as a raw recruit, all bumbling enthusiasm.

Tifa sighed internally. She'd be babysitting them all op, most likely. Reminded her of missions with Aerith, back when they'd been guarding Shinra grunts, before...

( _the fires, Nibelheim dying, her father, they'd killed her father_ )

With an effort, Tifa pushed those memories away.

Regardless of what they reminded her of, regardless of how incompetent they were, as long as they paid her, she was satisfied. That... that was how mercenary life worked.

_Mercenary work_ , she thought with an internal sigh. If dad could see her now...

… The three beside her were joking and talking and laughing. Even their leader, the blonde-haired man with the gun arm, engaged in friendly camraderie, mostly ribbing the red-haired guy about his tech, asking him if he was _sure_ his bombs would work.

...Some part of Tifa- the part that had never fully died, not even after Nibelheim- wanted to reach out and join them. Talk, be friendly, get to know these people. Find out what made them tick. She'd always loved people.

...But common sense overrode it. She'd been betrayed too many times. She hadn't even wanted to come along on this mission, except...

( Blonde hair and soft brown eyes, piercing her own mako-infused pupils; after all these years, and he greeted her with the gentlest smile she'd ever seen that conflicted, angry boy make, a smile so soft that it hammered down all her defenses. She was not the only one who had changed in these years; somehow, in the stony soil of a strife-filled heart, a beautiful sunflower had grown, and seeing it was so sweet that she would have agreed to anything he asked, in that moment.)

...She should have asked for more money.

The train continued on, Tifa keeping her eyes closed and just listening to the world around her. Ads and news information blared at her from outside, just flashes of light on her eyelids. Some commercial shilling Shinra's new casino, an announcement by the Director of Urban Planning, Barret Wallace, a quick advertisement for a documentary on Lucrecia Valentine, the shining star of Shinra's science division, promising a first-hand account of her astonishing rise to fame, and juicy details of her romance with the head of Shinra's Turks.

Nothing important, and Tifa dozed off, quietly, letting the train rock her to sleep.

A little while later, the train began to stop, and consciousness returned, though she did not open her eyes.

“ Yo, merc, better wake up,” the blonde man said.

“ Leave her be, Rufus,” the redhead said. “ A lady needs her beauty sleep!”

“ Not when a mission's on, Reno!” the new meat squawked.

“ Elena, be calm,” came a voice Tifa didn't recognize; the bald guy, she assumed. She turned her head to them, opening her eyes.

“ You ready?” the literally-firearmed man asked her, as he pulled out a pair of shades.

“ Are you?” Tifa asked.

“ Course I'm ready,” Rufus announced, putting on his shades. “ Now come on- prove Cloud right. Show me you're the woman he thinks you are.”

“ Planet knows he's spent long enough puffing you up,” Elena said. “ He talks of you like you're his white knight!”

Memory flashed through Tifa.

( _Promise me?_ )

She smirked.

“ Something like that,” Tifa admitted.

“ Enough talk, one more rundown,” Rufus said, speaking fast. “ We go in, and do our best to be sneaky. The mercenary handles any problems we run into until we get inside- then let's hope Reno's bombs don't kill us all.”

“ They won't!” Reno said, flipping a stun baton in his hands. “ Gonna get Shinra good!”

The bald man sighed. “ Let's hope they work.”

“ Let's go,” Rufus said, jerking his head to the door. “ Mercenary, you follow last- but you take care of any guards before they call for help, you hear me? They get an alarm off, we might as well shoot ourselves.”

“ It'd save Shinra the trouble!” Reno said perkily, wagging his eyebrows at Tifa.

She gave him nothing back, just a blank stare.

After a moment, he faltered, her lack of reaction throwing him off his groove, and he turend back to his friends.

_Good. Can't trust people._

( But somewhere inside, it hurt, just a little.)

“ Alright. Avalanche, let's go!” Rufus said.

“ Shouldn't our battle cry be 'let's rock?” Reno asked. “ 'Cause we're Avalanche?”

To Tifa's surprise, the bald guy burst out laughing at that, though he smothered it in a moment. Elena scoffed.

“ Reno, if you were twice as smart as you are, you'd still be half-stupid!”

Their laughter left the car along with themselves, leaping out; and Tifa was alone in the car for a moment.

She sighed, checked her gloves- plain leather and metal, nothing like the stuff R&D would come up with for her back in the day. She was Aerith's favorite partner, so Lucrecia went all out giving her fancy toys.

Now... now all she had to her name were these crappy gloves, and two materia, one sheltered safely in each palm. Lightning and healing, her standard load-out for years, because Aerith had always favored ice and her damn cat had always favored fire, though all three of them had carried healing. It felt... a lot like her yesterdays, doing this...

( _a single white feather, falling gently to the ground, and why does that fill me with such terror?_ )

Her hands shook. She forced them to stop with sheer willpower, and leapt off the train, somersaulting as she did so, just to make her entrance a little more obvious and spectacular.

( Nearby, Reno tried to wolf-whistle before Rude clamped a hand over his mouth.)

“ Halt!” yelled a Shinra guard as she appeared off the train, Avalanche hidden nearby behind some crates. “ Show some ID, this is a restricted area!”

Another guard ran up, and looked her over- she was wearing the ramshackle remnants of her SOLDIER outfit, the armor buckled together with too many belts and holding together mostly from force of habit. They took in the thick muscle of her arms- she'd lost the sleeves of her uniform at some point- and her fighting stance, and took a step back.

“ I'm Tifa Lockheart, First Class SOLDIER,” she told the soon-to-be-dead men, and slammed her right fist into her left palm. “ And this area is _mine_.”

( Somewhere nearby, a local florist and vegetable wholesaler with long strands of silver hair over his face sensed something amiss, but could not place where his terrible sense of dread was coming from.)


	2. Rebel Yell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to be switching POV each chapter. I'll return to TIfa most often- she's the main character!- but different viewpoints always broaden one's horizons.
> 
> So here's the Bombing Mission, starring the head of AVALANCHE, Rufus Shinra!

**Chapter II**

**Rebel Yell**

Rufus was a practical man.

Letting the ex-SOLDIER- if that's who she really was- handle the fighting was just good sense. As Rufus and his former Turks snuck behind crates, hid around corners, and dashed up stairs, the woman calling herself by the name of a dead heroine thrashed their opponents with relentless, ruthless efficiency. Her strikes were without hesitation or hurry; she lashed out from a multitude of ready positions, limbs like thunderbolts from a stormcloud, every blow strong and swift. Her fists crashed through armor, her legs sent the broken forms of soldiers flying, and nothing touched her, nothing _could_ , if she stepped out into a rainstorm she could dance dry as bone between the drops.

Her movements were never meaningless, and they never missed; each hit, each strike, seemed to flow into the next, a magnificent and brutal ballet that broke bones and ended lives. She even mixed magic into her attacks, always on-tempo, dancing to the beat of a drummer only she could hear; electricity leaped from target to target, triggering them to add their own spontaneous jigs to the battle choreography, nerves sizzling and popping as their synapses fused together into a single lump of murdered flesh.

No one survived long enough to send out a radio call. Only one grunt even had sense enough to immediately make for the radio on her belt; “Tifa” had thrown a fellow guard at her head hard enough to snap her neck, and that had been it. No signal was let out; if Rufus' inside woman had done her job, then the cameras inside were broken, too, and Shinra would not know they were even here until the reactor died.

It was impressive, he had to admit, as he hustled to another hiding point, guards rushing out of a nearby guard post past him and his crew and getting summarily pummeled for their trouble. Part of being pragmatic was seeing the world through clear, unprejudiced eyes, and for all that Rufus _knew_ this woman wasn't the legendary Tifa Lockheart, for a _multitude_ of reasons (not the least being that Tifa had been _dead_ for half a decade), she was a _damn_ good fighter.

She was done; time to move again. Down a long hallway- another guard post, and Rufus had to squeeze behind the thin cover of a vending machine. The shotgun on his left arm felt heavy, as it always did before potential violence; but the guards did not look twice at the vending machine, nor the four people trying very badly to hide behind it. They couldn't afford to, not when a woman in shattered SOLDIER armor was daring them to attack her with two beckoning fingers.

The Shinra grunts ran past AVALANCHE, and AVALANCHE ran past them, to the sounds of incredible violence. The merc was doing her job, and doing it well; if she didn't betray them, she'd be worth the money.

That just left the question of who she was, which Rufus pondered even as they reached a wire fence that Rude set to carving a hole through with the efficiency that had, once upon a time, marked him for fast promotion in the Turks, before he had decided his loyalty to Rufus was higher than his loyalty to Shinra.

Rufus spared a glance at them, checking them over. No wounds, everyone seemed in high spirits except Elena, who seemed nervous and tense- which was normal for her. Good. They were doing okay.

With the Turks' status clear, Rufus had time, waiting for Rude to finish slicing through the fence with the bright flame of the small welding torch he'd brought. The former vice president ran down the possibilities. “Tifa” was definitely Ex-SOLDIER, the mako eyes were proof enough of that. But who? Some 3rd class who was working a resemblance to the legendary Lockheart? Rufus' memories of Tifa were old, and he'd never gotten a good look at her up-close, but this woman _did_ strongly resemble her.

...She _had_ to be a 3rd class. When the war with the Western Alliance had heated up, Midgar had just thrown whole handfuls of people into the SOLDIER program, trying desperately to make up the difference in numbers. Such haste produced sloppy records; even before Rufus had left his father's company, they'd lost track of some of the 3rd class in the chaos of the war. They'd never lost track of anyone in the 2nd class, much less the 1st rank- there had never been more than a dozen of those, even before Zack Fair betrayed Shinra and took so many with him as defectors- but the 3rd class SOLDIERs... no, there were quite a few of those who'd disappeared.

A 3rd class, surfacing now... yes, that fit with what he was seeing. Impressive as all this was, he'd expect a 1st class to have even less trouble- or, at the very least, to charge more.

“ We're in,” Rude said, going through. Rufus covered them as they all ducked and entered, then went through himself, covered by Elena and Reno both. The mercenary caught up by that time, sliding through the gap without stopping. More guards, dogs with them this time, poured through the back of the room; Rufus dove behind heavy machinery, his ex-Turks following, and their hired help charged the crowd, entering it with a leaping punch that sent one man sprawling. AVALANCHE ran down a side hallway as the fight continued, Rufus silently analyzing the mystery woman currently kicking a guard dog's spine into dust with a whirling roundhouse. That was _definitely_ a Zangan-style technique...

This woman might be a 3rd class SOLDIER that Tifa herself had trained, now that he thought about it. Lockheart had been famous for spreading Zangan's teachings to others. He'd even heard rumors she'd taught Aerith some of her techniques, though who on Planet thought _Aerith_ needed more ways to kill people was beyond Rufus.

( He still remembered the things he'd seen her do in the war, observed at a distance from command posts- whole companies of men frozen forever in death in fields of thick ice, Aerith posing almost as if in prayer with her staff, all gentle beauty as her magic devastated entire companies. Even back then, the juxtaposition had frightened Rufus nearly out of his mind; the stories of Aerith did not do the real thing justice.)

So a 3rd class who looked like Lockheart, pretending to be her, who had been taught some Zangan-style martial arts. That was their “Tifa.” The answer made sense, Rufus thought, as they hijacked an elevator, the mercenary leaping out of the door first so she could introduce yet more guard dogs to the concept of playing dead.

_But what about Cloud?_ Rufus thought as he ran past the unfortunate mutts. There was the rub. Why did Cloud think he knew her? Rufus had never been sure about Cloud's stories of knowing the famous Tifa Lockheart in his youth; same hometown, yeah, but by those standards everyone in Midgar should have known Aerith personally. It wouldn't be like Cloud to lie about this- Rufus trusted Cloud completely, he was no liar or schemer. He was the kind of man so honest and open that he got taken advantage of- Rufus should know, he'd been doing it for years, and driving off the other vultures in the meantime.

( Just good business; Cloud's pub gave them a home and a base. Just good sense, to defend the man from opportunists, even as he made his own profit off of him.)

...If Cloud _had_ grown up with Tifa, and this woman had been trained by her, well... it had been half a decade since he'd seen the real thing. Maybe this woman was just pretending to be Tifa, using stories the actual Tifa had told her to convince Cloud she was the real deal; yeah, Cloud seemed the type to buy that kind of story, the sort of person who _wanted_ to believe Tifa had lived and so would put any inconsistencies he saw out of mind. Besides, Cloud had been in Shinra's army, too, and that gave them a further connection; military types could swap stories all day, and if she looked like the girl Cloud remembered and had one or two “personal” stories...

Yeah... that fit.

“ We're here, boss,” Reno said, opening the last door and interrupting Rufus' train of thought. The steel bulkhead opened on an elevator. “ Once we're in, it's all automated defenses- we can go as loud as we want!”

Rufus nodded, and shook off his former train of thought. Too many questions. Focus on the mission.

He flicked the safety on his shotgun off, and checked his materia again- cure and barrier, same as it'd been when this started.

“ Going loud, then,” he said, and AVALANCHE drew their weapons. Elena, trying to reload her pistol, fumbeld and nearly flung the clip directly at Reno's forehead. “ Mercenary- you're with me on point. The rest of you follow behind us.”

She nodded her head. “ You're the customer.”

“ Here we go,” Reno said, as they walked inside, and the elevator started its descent, the usual gentle elevator muzak playing.

Rufus was a practical man, which was why he didn't waste time preaching to the mercenary on the elevator ride down.

He'd debated it. It wasn't natural to him, but part of running an eco-terrorist organization was learning to give a good bit of preaching, every now and then, drumming up support for his cause. He was careful with it, tried to pick people already inclined to believe, and he practiced in private; over the last five years, he liked to think he'd gotten pretty good at it, though he didn't have Rude's gift for conversion. Between the four of them and Cloud, they'd garnered a good number of recruits to his side, people who believed in the truth he brought them, and while none of them could fight, all contributed to hiding his presence from Shinra and contributing funds and supplies to the cause.

It was a weird thing, to preach the scientific truth, to make a religion out of the real, but he'd managed it.

This mercenary, though... she was _not_ going to be receptive. He could tell. He didn't know what thoughts were going through the false Tifa's head, but whatever they were, they were almost certainly not “wow, this Planetology thing is the truth.”

So he used the time to keep his people alive. He cast spells of protection from physical and magical harm both, spells that would last longer because of the little chunk of clear materia attached to his barrier magic, one of the only things he'd managed to grab before Vincent had blown up his office. Around Reno, Rude and Elena he wove a shell of magic, to protect them from harm; a clear, crisp scent in the air followed his magic as he drew spells from the crystallized energy, like ozone after a lightning strike, alongside a tint to the air around them of protective yellows and greens, like the patterns on the shell of a turtle.

The mercenary did not comment on her lack of such a gift as Rufus popped open an ether and downed it, the bitter ingredients awash under an artificial flavor best described as “blue.” The bottle had Heidegger's smiling face, alongside the Shinra logo; a shame to use such products, knowing the cost, but Rufus had to bow to the realities of his situation.

When he took the company back over, he'd find better ways to do these things; maybe dig up some of Tuesti's old files, he'd always been interested in making their product more environmentally friendly.

( Another person he hoped and prayed had died, in those furious hours after his attempted coup, who had tried to help and paid for it. Planet willing, Reeve had returned to the Lifestream in peace, and not fallen into the hands of his enemies. Lucrecia had a cruel streak well-hidden underneath her cheerful demeanor and beautiful looks- beautiful looks that had not changed in a quarter of a century.)

Instead, she asked, “ No protection for yourself?”

He shrugged. “ I'm tough enough to take it,” he said, which was close enough to the truth. He'd been through a lot since the failed coup. No reason to waste the energy.

“ We're not?” Reno asked, puffing up like a rooster. “ Awful rude, boss.”

“ Why are you bringing Rude into this?” Elena asked, the oldest joke the trio had, and the big man sighed deeply as he put his hand to his forehead.

The doors opened, sparing Rufus from any more of the amateur comedy hour, and the quintet began their assault.

Past the door were no more human guards, no more guard dogs- nothing that could mutate, nothing that long exposure to the corrupted Lifestream could warp into... things. Just robots and drones, stirring to life at their approach, who did not care how much mako they were exposed to, automated systems ready to kill intruders, that could spend their entire lives swimming in mako without... side effects.

His memory threatened to pull him back towards Wutai, towards what he'd seen there, a threat ended when a drone tried to shock him to death.

The roar of his shotgun was a comforting thing, banishing memory, and he had _never_ been more grateful to be stuck in a battle for his very life.

_Weird thought_ , he mused, as he blasted another drone. The pellets that hit the drone flickered briefly with lightning and small fires, the chunks of old materia in his custom-made buckshot activating from the force of impact. Lightning and fire materia, a standard loadout, good against most things. Rufus No-Longer-Shinra loved making weapons and unusual ammo- it was why he'd preferred a shotgun all these years, for the weird shells you could make- but his resources had considerably shrank over the last few years, to the point that his current, personally hand-made rounds were created from scrap he'd found in the junkyards outside Sector 7, scrap metal and pieces of old materia carved by hand into usable form.

Still, they worked, the lightning scrambling the automated systems, though the fire was little more than an annoyance for the robots. Still, receiving a chunk of materia to your outsides at high speed did no one much good; he wasn't a storm of unbridled strength like the merc, but he was holding his own.

If he'd had Darkstar with him, he'd have done even better; he still missed that dog.

( He hoped she had died; he hoped that Vincent's strike- the same one that tore off his arm- had killed her. If she'd lived, then Lucrecia would have gotten her hands on his poor dog, and... well, Rufus was not a man given to prayer or hope, but he hoped and prayed that she'd escaped the Valentines, and went peacefully back to the Lifestream. Darkstar had given him too many years of faithful service for Rufus to wish any less.)

The automated defenses were exactly what they'd always been; nobody attacked Mako Reactors, not since the war, and Shinra was not in the habit of beefing up security without a good reason to spend the gil. Drones and robots and automated turrets were their only opposition as they dove deeper- nothing too dangerous, not for an ex-SOLDIER and ex-Turks.

As the mercenary performed multiple feats of acrobatic and elegant aggression, his Turks picked up the slack behind him. Reno smacked them with his electric baton, Rude delivered his crushing blows, and Elena filled them pistol fire or, in one notable case, kicked a drone so hard it flew into a laser turret, which in turn fired its shot and carved up a chunk of wall that then fell down and destroyed an entire pack of flying drones. The drone she'd kicked, meanwhile, exploded for no visible reason, obliterating the turret, too.

Even the mercenary had quirked an eyebrow over that one.

No serious wounds were taken by any of his team. The barriers saved them, though a few things managed to punch through and do some minor harm. Elena took the worst of it, of course, because she always did; tasers and lasers and shrapnel seemed to seek her out, the woman eternally unlucky. Rude's up-front charges got him a time or two as well, charring the plain jeans, black overshirts and simpler polo jackets they wore in lieu of the fancy, custom-made suits that were once their uniform.

Rufus restored them whenever they were hurt, cure flowing from the materia in his shotgun arm and into his companions. When he tugged on it with his mind, it pulled forth a sparkling green thing that danced through the air towards whomever he was healing, and carried a strange scent to it, of deep earth after rain, the green scent of old and well-loved gardens, the hot spices of Cosmo Canyon he'd been smelling the day his world changed.

The Sweeper that showed up as they began their final approach gave him a bit of worry, but “Tifa” had distracted it, focused its attentions on her, and between the five of them they'd pulped it to pieces without harm. A few bullets had struck her, but mako-enhanced cells both resisted _and_ regenerated better, and in less than a second the impact points had cleared away.

If he'd been shot like that... well, he'd have been fine, too, SOLDIER types weren't the only ones protected by their inner spring of Lifestream energy, but it'd have taken him a hell of a lot longer or a blast of healing magic to do it. Having an ex-SOLDIER on missions... he could get used to this, if he could just scrounge up more money to pay her. 3rd class lying about her rank or not, she was damn useful.

Down, down into the depths, AVALANCHE plus one, hunting the heart of this mechanical devil so that it might be put down. Old memories threatened to surface, rolling under his conscious mind like sea serpents beneath a ship; he did his best to keep them down, but even his iron will could slip, and the oddest things proved slick under his mental feet. Guardrails and metal walkways metamorphosed briefly in his vision into the twisted metal piles he'd seen in Wutai; ladders and vending machines made him remember burned and blasted remnants of exactly these kinds of ladders and vending machines, all in piles around the prototype reactor.

A bench brought back the strongest memory, breaching the surface of his mind- there had been one bench, curiously untouched, perfect and pristine in the middle of what they would come to call the Wutai Wasteland, it had been near the reactor's heart but when the protoype exploded it had, impossibly, been left unmarked. Just... untouched, amidst all that death and deveastation.

( _the people I saw there, the kids the people the mutations, scared to death of me but attacking anyway, something stronger than fear in their eyes_ )

He nearly fell off a ladder, and mentally scolded himself. Hard enough to climb all these ladders while missing a hand; focus. Focus.

When they got to the heart, the rest of them stayed on watch above them. Rufus' idea- a precaution, in case the Lockheart-wannabe turned traitor. AVALANCHE might be able to outrun her, if shit hit the fan. Reno handed his bomb to Rufus with great ceremony.

“ Take care of my baby,” Reno said. “ Blast on that thing ain't big, but it's enough to fuck these pipes up good and permanent. Maybe save some souls.”

“ Something like that,” Rufus agreed. Into his tattered longcoat's pockets, and then down one more ladder, to stand atop the platform floating above a font of mako... an upwelling of the Lifestream.

He gazed down into it, and shook his head. This was an atrocity. Human knowledge and wisdom and entire _lives_ , all lit on fire to generate electricity, each such soul consumed lessening the world entire.

Rufus was not a sentimental man, but he _was_ a practical one, and the... the _waste_ here horrified him. There was more, and worse, to the Reactors- the mutations, the dangers of their operation, the wasted money- but this was what had prompted him to try and _stop_ it, all those years ago.

With only a few inches of steel between them and the river of souls, Rufus and his companion strode forward to do the work of the Planet.

“ If you don't mind, I'd prefer if you did the honors,” he said, as he pulled Reno's bomb out of his pocket- a bomb labeled “hot stuff” in bright red marker, because Reno was Reno, and seeing it gave Rufus a headache.

“ Why?” she asked.

“ Maybe I want someone else's fingerprints on the bomb,” Rufus snarked. “ I'm paying you well enough. Just place it on that console and press the button- it'll ask how long to set it for. Press the button up until you've got at least twenty-five minutes- unless you feel you need more time.”

Their extensive pre-mission planning had indicated that would be _plenty_ of time, even if things went wrong- which they would. Plans went perfectly only by accident.

The mercenary quirked an eyebrow at him, then shrugged and took the bomb. “ Twenty-five it is- though I find this a bit dramatic.”

Rufus nodded, acknowledging the point. It _was_ a bit dramatic.

It also wasn't why he was ordering her to do it. Like hell he was turning his back on her to fiddle with the bomb.

Not-Tifa said. “ Bomb set. Twenty-five minutes.”

“ Good,” Rufus said- right as he heard a series of heavy clanking sounds, coming from... the _ceiling?_

“ What?...” he had time to say, looking up, and then the mercenary had her hands on him.

He was thrown through the air- a curious, weightless feeling- and he had just enough time to think _shit, she_ was _a traitor after all_ before he landed heavy against a guardrail, smacking it with his back and grabbing onto it with his free arm. The stolen mako of the Lifestream bubbled dangerously behind him, the guardrail bending from the force of his impact, and for a second he thought the buckling metal would tip him over into the pool.

Images flashed through his mind of mutations he'd seen, bodies warped and disfigured- _No, no, no!_

Somehow, the Shinra-installed cheap iron held, despite Shinra safety standards being a joke, and he was able to scramble away from the deadly fluid. The Planet was holy, but that didn't make it any safer to stick your arm in corrupted mako than acid.

Just as he rose up, he saw _why_ his paid assistant had thrown him- landing heavily right where he had been standing was one of the biggest combat mechs he'd ever seen. Red as a fire engine, hands massive cannons, six powerful mechanical legs, and with a great tail curling up behind it, the thing was built like some sadistic engineer's idea of a scorpion.

He was even pretty sure he knew who said sadistic engineer was; Scarlet had always had a fondness for mimicking living forms in her vicious toys.

The ex-SOLDIER had thrown him to safety, and backflipped out of the blast zone herself; she was already fighting the thing, hurling lightning as it chased her on its six mechanical legs, guns blazing. Missiles erupted out of launchers on its sides as bright spotlights sought to both keep its guns locked on its target and blind her.

...Well. She'd saved his life, and it was just good business to encourage that kind of thing.

He swapped his shotgun rounds for slugs, great fat bolts of pure metal, a quick in-and-out of clips in his custom-made weapon, and took aim. One shot for each spotlight, twin booms that blinded the thing- and drew its attention. The small, heavily armored head turned its attention to him, the body spinning about, and it raised its tail, pointed the now-glowing end at him.

Rufus didn't know what that meant, but he knew it wasn't good, and he hurled himself to the side. The laser that melted the walkway missed him entirely, the blast slicing through and striking the mako energy pool beneath them, which hissed and sizzled as it boiled.

_I hope the Planet doesn't count that one against me_ , Rufus thought, as he took aim again. The mercenary was striking at the legs, her blows actually denting the metal- Ancients, that was terrifying to see, a person whose flesh was stronger than factory steel- and as the thing turned its attention back to her, he fired again, trying to distract it. It was slow to switch targets, so if they could keep it going back and forth, they might have time to kill it...

The thing's guns roared at him, and he hurled himself to the side again, not quite quick enough this time. A shot grazed his leg, tearing a gouge out of his hip; he popped a potion from a pack on his belt and dumped the restorative on the cooked meat, ignoring the familiar itch as it regrew his flesh. A swift casting put a shield up around him, and he stood before it again, blasting away with slugs that dinged off its armor.

Still, it annoyed it enough to turn around again, and the deadly tail raised up, ready to fire again. Rufus' muscles tensed to dodge.

Then the thing shook, paused. Lightning, flickering over its body, the mercenary striking some vital component with a deadly bolt. She leapt onto its back as the shuddering faded, heavy rubber soles of her boots protecting her from remnant currents, and she...

She reached up, grabbing the top of the still-charging tail, and planted it directly in the center of the robot's back.

Rufus' eyes widened behind his shades as he hurled himself out of the way.

The laser fired automatically, helpless to do anything but discharge the gathered energy. The laser carved a hole straight through the beast, melting metal and circuitry and everything it touched. The heat must have been _incredible_ , but still she held the laser tail tight, unflinching and stoic, only a pained grunt and gritted teeth indicating any discomfort on her part as red-hot slivers spattered her face.

The robot's upper half melted, the legs collapsed too, the mercenary letting go of the tail and leaping off as the tail slowly jerked to a stop without a central processor to command it. She landed before the dying robot as it collapsed at last, and wiped her skin of cooled metal, scattering it as her skin healed.

Rufus couldn't help but stare, though he quickly shook it off. Even after everything, he hadn't expected _that_.

“ Well,” Rufus said, “ with that done, we're free to go... though I can't imagine why they had a military grade robot guarding a random reactor.”

“ They must have known you were coming,” she said. “ It's the simplest explanation.”

...It was, and Rufus didn't have an answer for that.

“ Let's get going, then,” he said. “ Bomb won't wait.”

“ Guys, holy _shit_ , what was that?”

Elena. Rufus had plain forgotten his Turks were in the room during the fight. “ An unexpected complication,” he told the blonde. “ We dealt with it.”

“ Like shit _you_ did,” Reno said. “ Did you see her?”

His expression indicated he'd found religion and love all at once. Rufus suppressed a deep sigh. “ Save it for when we're free of the blast radius,” he told the three. “ Let's go.”

“ Yes, sir,” Rude said, and the unlikely quintet took off. Drones kept attacking, because of course they did; mindless robots literally had no idea the building was about to explode.

( Not that Reno's bomb was nearly so big. Rufus had no desire to save the world by murdering the innocent; some people would die, he couldn't avoid that when he shut the power off, but he had a duty to limit the damage. People would be more accepting of the truth if it came with as little violence as possible- and Rufus could not begin to fix the damage his family had done without getting people to accept the truth first.)

They fought back as quickly as they could. Things went wrong, as they always did; a stray blast from a turret knocked a walkway down, falling straight towards Elena, because she had the worst luck of anyone Rufus had ever met.

“ Oh hell,” she had time to say- right before Rude shoved her out of the way, the walkway slamming down on him instead.

“ Rude!” Reno yelled, but he was stuck between drones, couldn't reach him. Rufus tried, and got shocked for his trouble, cursing as he reloaded his gun with buckshot and not slugs.

The mercenary leapt over the surrounding robots, and headed over to him.

“ He's alive!” she called back, and put her hands to the metal atop him. “ I've got it.”

Muscles bulging, legs straining, the big woman began to lift the mass of metal, Elena keeping the drones off of both her and Rude with gunfire. Rude, clearly hurt, was able to crawl out after a few long, torturous seconds, the thin shield of Rufus' protection fading... but it had done its job. Instead of killing him, the falling walkway had only hurt him, and hurt could be healed. Rufus, finishing the fight he was stuck in, prepared to do just that.

But before he could, the mercenary, dropping the walkway, knelt down and put a surprisingly gentle hand on Rude's shoulder.

“ Here, hold still,” the woman said, channeling life into him. Her cure came with sound- a martial artist's cheerful _kiai_ , a happy kind of sound, and friendly adult laughter, the kind you might hear at a barracks after a victory, accompanying the green. Military sounds, camaraderie and courage.

“ T-thank you,” Rude stuttered, and _blushed_ as he looked away, standing up.

Rude, blushing? Wonders would never cease.

“ Are you okay?” Reno asked his best friend as he finally reached him, the drones dead after enough baton swings. Rude nodded.

“ I'm good.”

“ Thanks, merc,” Reno said, a sentiment Rufus shared.

“ Let's get moving, people,” Rufus said as he reached them. “ Bomb won't wait.”

More fighting, but nothing spectacular happened to anyone, though Elena finally thanked Rude a few minutes later, belatedly realizing she hadn't- Rude accepted her hurried apology with grace, because he was the only one of the three with any sense of class.

They escaped in plenty of time, Reno laughing, Elena scolding, Rude stoically quiet whenever he wasn't looking at their hired help like he'd been hit with a sledgehammer. A good mission, all told; in, out, no one dead, no one even seriously hurt. Even the SOLDIER seemed to feel pretty good, a softening in the cold woman's features.

Yeah... this had went well. As they caught their breath down a side alley, decorated with posters advertising a new theatrical version of LOVELESS, some play about a Warrior of Light, and the ninth consecutive week of _I Want to Be Your Canary_ , Rufus found himself sporting a rare grin.

If every mission went like this, he could shut Shinra down in a year.

He looked at the reactor, counting the seconds, even as he spoke.

“ Okay. Split up- we don't want to be caught as a group. We'll meet up at the Cid Highwind memorial statue in an hour. City'll be going dark, emergency lights cutting on, so be careful where you step, it'll be hard to maneuver for a bit. Avoid official attention at all costs; no sense in getting caught now, not after we just pulled that beauty of a mission off.”

“ What about my pay?” the paid help asked.

A fair question. “ You'll get paid when we get back to Cloud's pub,” Rufus said.

She nodded. Good.

Rufus turned back to the reactor. Any minute now...

Lights flickered, died. The entire city block was plunged into darkness for a second, as the great light of the reactor died quietly, no fanfare, hardly a whimper. The green flame of burning mako ended, and peaceful black descended upon the city, a holy darkness better than the unholy fire that had consumed so many souls.

Rufus closed his eyes in the sudden dark of the Plate's streets, just _savoring_ this moment.

_It's finally time,_ he said to the Planet. Others might call it praying. _I'm finally starting the great work. This is just the beginning; but you have my word, in time, I will make it right. I'll make everything right._

Sounds of distress began to echo out of the dark. Emergency lights kicked on, the neon signs bright red eyes in the dark illuminating exits and entrances, people scared and asking questions. People who now trusted Shinra less, who in days to come would question the company's omnipotence and omniscience. People who might be a little more receptive to the message. No one wanted to be associated with the losing side- if AVALANCHE could keep this up, show up Shinra as unable to keep its own reactors online, as _incompetent_ , then the grip the company held would begin to slip.

_Some people died tonight_ , he reminded himself. Not just the Shinra guards, but people who needed electricity tonight, sick folk in hospitals and those reliant on machines to breathe for them- a lot of people.

But it had to be done. Add the weight to the things he had already done, and had to make up for. He was a practical man. He would make up for all of it, in time. Between the damage AVALANCHE would cause and his allies on the inside, they could push his old man off his throne, he could take over, and begin to fix the harm they'd done...

That was when the reactor exploded, and _some people died tonight_ became _thousands perished_.

(In his office, his father sighed happily, as he watched the reactor explosion tear through the Plate, murdering a multitude of citizens. An annoyance, that these terrorists had such a delicate hand, but then, that was why he'd planted so many bombs in his own reactor- sometimes, subtlety was _terribly_ overrated.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope ya'll liked it!
> 
> Next chapter, we'll meet a local florist, hang out at a dead guy's statue, and finally see a specific yellow-headed guy and his rather lovely pub!
> 
> As always, if you like, leave a comment below! I love them!


	3. Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sector 8 in chaos- and a Tifa chapter!
> 
> With a surprise special guest!

**Chapter 3**

**Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down**

Tifa walked through Hell.

People were screaming; everywhere, people were screaming. Fire danced a cheerful jig around every corner; fire, the oldest friend of disaster, the leaping and merry flames the only happy folk here. Buildings fell, lives ended as the walls that once protected them from the elements betrayed their builders and crushed them. The lucky died instantly. The unlucky were buried alive, and she could hear them, people crying down in the dark, they would die down there alone and hurting. She caught one woman trying to help put out a fire, hurling spells of cold and frost into the inferno, and the jagged spikes juxtaposed with the fire made Tifa's breath catch in her throat.

( _white ice slick with red blood_ )

The town was in chaos all around her. Even the road failed to maintain conformity, buckled in a dozen places, the plate itself partially cracked by the force of the reactor bursting. People crowded the streets, fleeing burning or collapsing homes, and rescue services poured out to help; the Shinra logo everywhere, assisting with disaster, and wasn't that funny? Shinra, here to help; some part of Tifa, the colder and more rational part, realized that AVALANCHE's plan had backfired incredibly, that far from proving Shinra wrong, the people would cling to them ever tighter; they had been there when disaster struck, after all.

But little of Tifa's mind was so calm, so logical. Mostly, it was a jumble of conflicting thoughts and memories and impressions, mostly wordless; only her own will to survive kept her moving, marching through the streets as shell-shocked as any broken veteran she had seen during the war.

The world filtered in around the edges of her suffering. She caught brief snatches of news announcements- asking people to stay home if they could, clear the streets, let the rescue services through- nothing that mattered. Cats yowled as they escaped burning homes; dogs barked from behind locked doors, destined to die, scrabbling at the wood for a chance to survive. People cried, people shouted, the rare few in places of safety spoke in worried and nervous tones. Children called for parents; parents called for children. Lone lovers looked for lost loves. First responders spoke in the clinical tones of official reports, the state-mandated method of distancing oneself from the horrible suffering that was the very essence of the job, an organizational kindness.

Tifa only saw half of it, her mind was swimming back and forth between now and five years ago. Half a decade but it was here, now, so close; this was too much like what happened to her home, and it was her fault this time, too. Accusing faces glared at her from fire-filled windows, from burning places in doorways and flame-soaked alleyways. Too... too much alike, too similar.

( _his mother, burning, the fire went through her flesh and sizzled her nerve endings and it looked like dancing, his mother cavorted and leapt and burned_ )

She started to... lose herself... one moment stumbling down an unharmed alley, looking for a shortcut around a ruined street now full of what had, once, been an apartment building; the next, she was standing in a crowd, making her way through it quietly as the gathered crowd listened to news on a large television set, looking for meaning in the midst of monstrosity.

Tifa was alone for all of this. AVALANCHE had disappeared, scattering in groups of two- Rufus with Elena, Rude and Reno together- faces full of disbelief. This had not been the plan.

Something... something had went wrong.

( Reno had been talking of how this wasn't what was supposed to happen, denying the world around him even as it fell apart, swearing his bomb could _not_ have done this; Rude had walked away with his hand on Reno's shoulder, and Tifa felt that, if Rude had let go of him, Reno would have collapsed.)

Rufus' face had been cold calculation over deeper fury; he knew what had happened, Tifa suspected, he had muttered something about his father. Father...

...President Shinra had a boy, she'd heard back in SOLDIER. Involved with the Turks. She hadn't dealt much with that side of the company, the good, hard-working country girl too honest to have much truck with black ops and shadow operatives. Nanaki had always laughed whenever Tifa expressed such disdain; he'd taken pains to point out that, on official payrolls, he himself was listed as a Turk, some bureaucrat's way of handling his unusual position in Shinra's organization. Aerith had always laughed with him...

Aerith.

( _the ice and the fire and the mistake_ )

She shook herself away from those thoughts, by force of will suppressed all her past. Old soldier's trick; focus on now. Focus on... on what you could do, now.

Screams from nearby, screams she'd been hearing for a minute or two, but paid no attention to, not with her mind elsewhere. Down the alley to her left was a mother and a child, sobbing as they tried to pull a man out of metal wreckage. The father, one might presume, trapped under what had been a fire escape and was now his tomb. He was alive, for now, but some twisted piece of metal had pierced his guts; he had little time left, laid unmoving from the shock.

...Focus on what you can do, _now_. Tifa clung to that thought like the mantra it was, and moved to help.

“ Move,” Tifa said, more brusquely than perhaps she intended, and bent down, mako-enhanced hands on the broken metal. “ Pull him out when I lift!”

Up, up, _up_ , her muscles and her magic strained as she lifted the iron. As the metal- including the part that had sliced him open- was lifted off and away from him, his child and wife pulled him out. The child did their best; the skinny mother, with the power adrenaline granted every human, pulled her overweight husband out as though he weighed nothing at all. His size was perhaps the only reason he was still alive; the fat had cushioned the blow, working as natural armor, and the sharp end had not penetrated so deeply.

He would still die- but as he was now, she might be able to save him.

“ Get him to a doctor,” Tifa said, as she put her hand on the man. _Cure_ , she commanded her materia, and it answered, healing wrapped around the man, though the cheerful sounds that accompanied it were dulled due to Tifa's mental state. “ Tell them Cure magic was used; it'll stabilize him for now but he needs medical attention.”

What she'd done wouldn't keep him going for long; Tifa had healed too many soldiers on the battlefield to not have a working knowledge of medicine. The healing she'd used was not perfect, not with that kind of wound- cure spells didn't stop infection, that was a different brand of magic entirely, and while it would heal the wound it wouldn't prevent future complications.

But that was a problem for whatever medic attended him next; he would live, for now. Blinking his eyes, he turned to her, cheeks flushed with artificial good health as the magic wound about him.

“ Thank you,” he said, then seeing her eyes, cocked his head. “ SOLDIER? What's one of you doing down here?”

“ What I can,” Tifa said. “ Get to a doctor- first responders are over there.”

“ Thank you- bless you!” the woman said, as her husband stumbled to his feet, leaning on her as they left the alley, the husband holding his kid's hand and keeping them safe.

Tifa watched them go, and were she a praying woman, she might ask the Planet to help them; but as it was, she simply watched, and wished them well.

As she watched, something drifted down. She thought it was a piece of ash at first- but then her eyes refocused on it, and she drew in a sharp breath.

A single white feather, perfectly formed, drifting down to the alley floor.

“ You always were the kindest person I'd ever met.”

Tifa whipped her head around to the speaker who sat behind her, crouched incongruously on a trash can, leaning forward with her hands folded before her. Her head was cocked to the side, giving Tifa that infuriatingly smug smile, the one she'd worn whenever she had something mischievous planned. She was dressed the way she'd been the last time Tifa had seen her; her SOLDIER uniform, dark black shirt and pants under the massive red longcoat she favored, worn in honor of her father, leading down to the surprisingly-delicate sneakers she preferred to wear.

Tifa stumbled backwards and fell, holding a hand up to protect herself from the apparation.

“ You-!” Tifa's words locked in her throat, choked around too many things.

“ Howdy, Tifa,” Aerith said, in her soprano-sweet tone, sugary as arsenic. “ Not having the best time right now, I imagine.”

Tifa could not speak, could not move, could barely _breathe_ \- Aerith, after all this time-

“ Don't worry,” Aerith said, holding a hand up placatingly. “ I'm not mad at you. I overreacted at Nibelheim. I'm sorry for that. Even I can make mistakes.”

Tifa barely heard her, couldn't hear her- the alleyway was gone around her, she was back in Nibelheim and it was _ablaze_ , so much death, everyone she'd ever known in her youth.

( _the ice and the fire and the mistake_ )

“ But you know all about overreacting, don't you?” Aerith said quietly. “ We both made mistakes. It's not your fault. Even superior people like us... we make mistakes, Tifa. I... I hope you've changed, since then. I hope you can _see_ , and understand.”

She stood up, hopping off her garbage can throne. She took a few steps over to Tifa as a great white wing grew from her left shoulder, grew and extended over Tifa, shining with its own internal light. Where the light touched Tifa, she felt things moving under her skin, in her veins, in her bones, sapping away all her strength, weakening her.

Aerith leaned down, looked in Tifa's eyes, and the writhing increased.

“ Not yet,” she said. “ Not just yet. But soon. We can put all this behind us, all our mistakes, and be friends again.”

She smiled at her, the way she'd smiled that day- but Tifa's mind ran away from it, she _couldn't_ let herself remember it, the truth burned and Tifa could not stomach it. If she stayed here, she'd _remember_...

Panic gave Tifa power; she kicked herself up off the ground, and she ran. She ran, and as she passed from light into darkness, the writhing inside stopped, and her strength returned to her; but she did not stop. She ran from Aerith, who could not be here; she ran from Nibelheim, and the thing about it she did not remember, _could_ not remember, for it would destroy her.

( _the ice and the fire and the mistake_ )

Tifa ran.

-

The next thing she knew, she was waking up at the end of an alley.

Where?...

She'd fallen into a pile of ashes, drifting down from the burning buildings all around, carried by air currents to this particular alley and dumped here. The fires were still raging; she must not have been out for long. She arose from the ashes she'd fallen down in, shaking her head to clear it; she put a hand to her forehead, expecting pain, but there was... nothing. No pain, no headaches, no visions floating through her head.

( The truth was safely buried again, lost inside her.)

She got up on legs shaky with adrenaline, and... what was she doing? What _had_ she been doing? The last few moments... they were all a blur. She remembered seeing Nibelheim, all this fire was so much like Nibelheim... she'd helped that young couple, the big man and his small wife and their little child... then... nothing.

Just a weird image of a white feather falling down... probably just a weird-shaped piece of ash, or something. Her memory was blank after that.

...After a few long moments trying to remember, she shook her head. Focus on what you could do, _now_. That was the key.

She took a deep, steadying breath, wiped herself off, and walked out of the alley. She... she still needed to get paid. Then... then maybe she wouldn't take another job with this group. Shinra would be hunting them relentlessly after this anyway, and she doubted the common folk would be too happy with them either...

Rufus had said to meet up at... the Cid Highwind Memorial Statue. That was right. She knew where that was... she thought. Might need to ask for directions.

She stumbled out of the alley, into a relatively quiet area of the town; the only fires were those in the alley she'd just left, and a fire truck on the scene was controlling both of those burns. Residents were gathered away from the firefighters, who summarily ignored Tifa as she crossed their paths, focusing on the fire before them.

As she wiped her arms off again, trying in vain to get rid of the streaks of ashes left on them, she heard a nearby voice.

“ Miss, do you need assistance?'

The voice was startingly deep, though kindly in tone, like the voice of a kindly mountain spirit.

She turned to the speaker. A guy; about her age, she had to guess. Long white hair, tied back into a practical ponytail, above a long face and soft blue eyes. He was wearing a plain black t-shirt and black overalls over sensible work boots. Weathering on his hands indicated a working class man, if the overalls hadn't told her that already.

“ I'm fine,” she said.

“ If you're sure,” he said, a bit doubtfully. “ I can heal, if you need it.”

She raised a hand and tapped her own healing materia. “ Got it covered.”

He gave her a quick nod. “ Apologies for bothering you, then. If you need anything, feel free to ask; we need each other in times of crisis.”

Tifa paused. " Just one. Where... where is the Cid Highwind statue?"

The man paused. " Oh- it's that way," the farmer said, pointing down one street. " Follow that until the end, then take a right and go a bloc over. Can't miss it."

Tifa nodded, and walked away without another word. One advantage to her new decision to cut off as much contact with others as possible; it was _much_ easier to leave a conversation than it had been when she'd been... more conversational.

Some part of her felt a little guilty- the man had only been trying to help- but she was mostly relieved. He'd been a little _too_ nice; she didn't trust that. Aerith had been nice, too, after all.

The man shrugged at her sudden departure, but didn't seem mad; he simply went over to... what looked like a small, hand-drawn cart, pushed to the side of this great open space, a cart covered in flowers and an assortment of fresh vegetables. Some people came over from one of the small groups huddled nearby, and spoke with him; he nodded and, taking a few flowers with him, went over to sit with someone clearly in a state of shock, putting the flower in their hair and gently talking to them.

That flower... Tifa looked at it again. There; the faintest hint of mako energy... odd. He'd woven spells into his flowers; possible, but complicated. Aerith had done that a few times, but always complained of how difficult it was...

But enough- focus.

Tifa left, to reach the statue and link up wtih AVALANCHE, in time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have put Sephiroth in overalls. I am a GOD.
> 
> Just wait until you see what his actual weapon type is. It's the best joke I've ever told, and you just need to wait three chapters or so to read it!
> 
> Note that Sephiroth's age in this fanfic is much lower- he's only a year older than Tifa- but I have a good explanation for it. You'll see. :D Most other characters keep their ages.


	4. The Farm Boy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SEPHIROTH CHAPTER YEAH!

**Chapter Four**

**The Farm Boy**

Sephiroth sighed and leaned against the wall of the train. This... this had been one of the worst days of his life. So much death, so much fire... he'd spent most of it just assisting the emergency services workers. People trapped under rubble, fires raging out of control, building collapses... somehow Sephiroth had made it out, but it had cost him something in mental terms, a cost he wasn't sure he knew just yet.

The train was packed, so full it reminded the farm boy of the cans of processed meat Shinra sold, which they told people were full of chicken, stuffed so full that whenever you popped the tin lid, a spray of juices got you. His mother had made so many meals with that meat as a base, all they could afford in the bad days of the war, when rationing and war needs reduced the people of the slums to an even lower standard of living than they had previously suffered.

Sephiroth had never had the heart to tell her it wasn't chicken, except in the sense that a chicken might, once, have been the base creature Shinra experimented on to get the species they _actually_ put into those cans.

It wasn't like they could afford anything else, back in those days.

( He had barely understood their poverty; Elmyra had thrown her whole heart into being a mother for her strange, silver-haired boy, his childhood had been _happy,_ and all his memories of those long-ago days were sweet and warm.)

But then again, that was why he'd become the only farmer in the slums; people, his mother most of all, deserved better to eat.

A whisper- the Planet, chittering to him. He opened his eyes, turned his head; a group of people making their way through the crowd, people that stood out in the crowd. It wasn't just their manner of dress that made them stand out; it was their expressions, dark and furious looks that weren't like what anyone else was wearing at that moment. People were worried and nervous; _these_ five people, however, were angry, angry in the gut-deep kind of way that Sephiroth understood all too well. His own emotions boiled hot, too, for all that he tried not to be ruled by them. The redhead seemed the closest to being like the rest of the crowd, his expression angry but also mixed in with something sad; the bald man next to him was more understated, but his rage still resonated in the stiffness of his form. The blonde woman was handling it the best; angry, but still functional, keeping watch around them, even as she, at one point, tripped over her own feet.

The last two, though...

The blonde man wore a large, tattered white cloak, but in such a way that it covered his left arm entirely; the other was the woman he'd met earlier today, during the frantic hours after the Reactor had exploded. She'd found an overcoat somewhere too, but she seemed even more tired than she had when he'd seen her earlier, even more exhausted; when she'd walked out of that alley, he thought she'd been shell-shocked. Her eyes gleamed with the mako of SOLDIER treatments; the fires had probably given her unpleasant flashbacks to the war.

The Planet's whispering slurred in his ears again. No real words; it had never been words, not once in all his life. The Planet was sensations and tones and emotions, particularly with him, whom it had never intended to befriend at all, with whom it had slid- grudgingly- into something like partnership, over the last few years.

Which meant that, if the Planet was willing to communicate with him of its own free will, then this woman _mattered_.

...What was he supposed to do now? The Planet's instructions were never clear; often, he only knew he'd failed or succeeded at what was asked of him after he'd already committed. The Planet would send approval or disapproval, in varying amounts, and it always left him wondering. A small bolt of disapproval- did that mean he'd _mostly_ done it right, and only cocked up the last bit, or had his failure not been important in the grand scheme of things? Why so much weight put on little acts- was there a grand plan, or did the Planet simply approve of small kindnesses?

_Instructions unclear, ask again,_ he thought back to the Planet, with some annoyance, his strange and alien cells crawling under his skin as they sought to translate his thoughts into something the Planet could hear.

No answer was forthcoming; not that he'd expected one.

So, only knowing that the woman mattered, and that he had to interact with her _somehow_ , Sephiroth went with his gut instinct, bred into his bones by his mother's teachings.

He saw a person in trouble, and he went to help.

“ Hey,” he said, rising up out of his lean as the quintet reached him on their slow press towards the front. “ We met, right?”

The woman glanced at him, recognition slowly brightening her eyes- but then shadows fell over them. “ Yes.”

Short, curt, cold. The rest of the group had stopped, and their gaze on him made him feel self-conscious; he was just a farm boy, after all, and these people were tense and angry.

“ I...” he fumbled a moment, looking for something to say. His gaze fell on his last flower, tucked into his overall pocket; he almost always kept one for the ride home. Never knew when a bit of subtle background healing magic might come in handy. The magic he'd eventually cajoled the Planet to weave into his flowers wasn't much- not like the real deal- but it improved your mood, encouraged your body's natural processes, and overall, just made you feel... better.

She looked like somebody who could do with some feeling better.

“ Here,” he said, and took it out of his pocket, planting it in her hands. He'd found that if you offered someone something, they'd decline, but if you just handed it to them, they'd take it, if for no other reason than surprise. “ It'll make you feel better.”

She lifted the flower up, looked over the green leaves and deep purple-black of the petals. His own personal creation, some mixture of the Planet's native plants and whatever was inside his blood, the thing the Planet feared about him, and hated. Lovely flowers, they grew everywhere, and sucked up some forms of pollution inside themselves, breaking them down and rendering them harmless. He'd never named the species; it felt inappropriate, somehow. Let it be a wild and unnamed thing, even if he'd cultivated its creation.

“ Magic,” she said, turning her glowing mako eyes on him, her pupils just _barely_ thinner, more slitted, than an unaugmented human's. The effect was unnerving; Sephiroth, who was not lacking in courage, felt a bit taken aback by them. “ You infused these with healing?”

“ I did,” he said. “ Cures and esunas; not much there, a gentle touch, nowhere near what even the smallest true casting of those spells might do. But... longer lasting. Lightens the burden on your back, just a little bit.”

He cocked his head, and summoned up the strength after his long, rough day to give her a real, honest, genuine smile. She'd had a rough day, after all, and no matter how strange he found her, she was still a person, and still deserved happiness.

“ Keep it,” he said. “ You look like you've had a rough night. And if you don't want it, give it to someone else who needs cheering up; lot of them in the city tonight...”

Tifa nodded- and to Sephiroth's relief, tucked the flower into the upper part of her armor, above her heart.

“ Thank you,” she said quietly, the words sounding odd in her throat, as if she had not said them in far too long.

“ It's no trouble,” he said, and then the blonde man was nudging her; the others had gone on ahead, and they were falling behind.

Without another word, the strange woman took off, leaving him be; but the Planet sent him a warm bolt of approval. He'd done the right thing, and he went back to leaning with a happy sihg.

( When the news came, that they were responsible for the bombing, he wondered what plans the Planet had for them.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SURPRISE UPDATE
> 
> Got inspired! So here's the flower boy, the mighty farmer, Sephiorth!


	5. Interlude I: Of Game Mechanics - Tifa and Rufus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Just a fun, quirky thing I thought up. Ignore if you don't want to read a rather pedantic bit of imagination. :D It's not that relevant to the tale.

**Interlude 1**

**On Game Mechanics:**

**Tifa and Rufus**

Because this AU was inspired by long discussions on the way game mechanics in FF7 might play out in the real world- including a rather hilarious and bizarre discussion on the benefits of just eating raw materia like they're fucking apples- it amuses me to toss in chapters like this discussing what the character's game mechanics would be if this were actually a video game, and not a fanfic.

I am presuming a FF7 Remake style of combat here, as I rather enjoyed the fighting in that game, and I feel it has better potential to explore what I'm getting at with this. There's a little lore tucked away in here, but if you don't find this interesting, you can skip this chapter.

**TIFA LOCKHEART**

**Age:** 25

 **Class:** Master Monk

 **Initial Weapon:** Rag Knuckles

 **Description:** Tifa made these out of scraps of leather and metal she found on the outskirts of Midgar when she first arrived to the city. Functional, with two Materia slots, but weapons reflective of quiet desperation.

Tifa, as the main character, is the character the player is assumed to be using for most of the game. Befitting such a status, Tifa thus has the best overall stats and the simplest mechanics of the party; this is itself an amusing irony, because Tifa has traditionally always had the most complicated mechanics of any FF7 character, between her Slots-based Limit Break in the original to her Unbridled Strength and unique Triangle moves in the Remake.

**Stats:** In terms of general stats, Tifa is one of the strongest characters, as befitting an experienced ex-SOLDIER. Her physical attack and her speed are her best stats- she's by far the physically strongest character, and is third in speed, behind two characters I can't talk about just yet! She's much less frail than Tifa is in FF7 or the Remake, particularly against physical attacks; she has excellent physical defense, ranking in top four, and her health is exactly in the middle of the party.

Magically, she's a surprisingly powerful attacker, ranking at 3 behind Rufus and a character we've already met. Defensively, though, it's a different tale; her real weakness is magical defense. Tifa has a very low defense against magic, the second poorest in the game, and casting Shell on her is a _great_ idea.

**Mechanic:** Tifa's mechanic is **Flow**. Flow focuses on Tifa's speed and damage. When playing Tifa, a counter appears showing how many hits Tifa has delivered so far. The higher the number climbs, the more damage Tifa does, and the less damage and knockback she takes from enemy attacks. Magic attacks count. This number will begin rapidly dropping if Tifa goes too long without attacking enemies, and you can take Weapon Abilities that lengthen that time, as well as enhance the effects.

This encourages a very direct, smash-mouth style of play as Tifa; fling her into combat, and her own momentum will not only tear down her enemies, but prevent her from taking as much harm in return.

**RUFUS ~~SHINRA~~**

**Age:** 22

 **Class:** Engineer

 **Initial Weapon:** Makeshift Shot

 **Description:** Rufus made this gun himself, using his original shotgun as a base while replacing the ammo loader with an automatic variation and the stock with shock absorbers. It hurts him every time he fires the gun, since it presses it tight against his old wounds; Rufus views it as the Planet's way of reminding him of _why_ he must fight.

Rufus, leader of AVALANCHE! Rufus, no-longer-Shinra ( he has rejected the name until such time as he can take the company back over) is another fairly straightforward character, since he's also introduced in the first hour of the game. Unlike Tifa, though, his mechanic is not automatic, introducing the player to the idea of player-controlled abilities, as well as requiring them to think more than when they play Tifa, who can just leap into battle and start beating her enemies like she's a gorilla and they're a pair of bongos.

While he's the Barret analogue, he has multiple notable differences; while Barret was one of the oldest of the recruitable characters in the original, Rufus is the youngest party member here, and their approaches to leadership and even the Planet are radically different. Rufus also doesn't have years of backbreaking labor as a coal miner to give him strength, but unlike Barret- who more or less had to learn everything on his own the hard way, due to being born poor- Rufus has the benefit of being born a rich kid, and so is incredibly well-read and learned.

**Stats:** Stat-wise, Rufus is magic, all the way. He's the second best magical attacker in the party and has the second best magical defense. He's also startingly fast; he's the fourth fastest, just behind Tifa. In terms of spell damage output, you could do much worse, and a feature of many of his weapons is that the Weapon Abilities include a move called Fast Cast that lowers his spellcasting time, a feature no one else shares.

Physically, Rufus is much less imposing. His defense is terrible, as is his health; he's the second-frailest party member. His physical attack, however, is startlingly high; partly this is because his mechanical arm compensates for his general weakness, and partly because sheer fanatical drive to succeed powers his strikes.

**Mechanic:** Rufus' mechanic is **Ammo.** Rufus is a bit of a gun nut, a status that did not go away when he became an eco-terrorist, and he makes his own ammunition.

When Rufus uses Ammo, he can select one type of Ammo, and he'll load his gun with it. Every shot afterwards has the Ammos' special effect applied to it. Example Ammo types include Materia Buckshot- which does damage of a random element every time it's fired- Heavy Slugs- which ignore armor- and Viper Rounds, which poison the target and inflict other status effects at random once the poison sets in.

Ammo cannot be bought. Different items found in the world allow Rufus to make new types of Ammo. Ammo, once created, is infinite- it's assumed Rufus made enough of it to last- so you don't have to worry about running out.


	6. Heavenly Cloud

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took longer than I'd hoped to crank out. Had too many ideas; slimmed it down, but apologize, this one's a bit heavy of a chapter.
> 
> Still, I promise we are DONE with the Bombing Mission. On to new and better things in our next chapter!

**Chapter Six**

**Heavenly Cloud**

Ever since the news came down, he'd been getting ready.

The Buster Pub and Diner, named for the sword of a traitor, was quiet, a rarity in Midgar this night. While many of Sector 7's citizens were sleeping off rough days at work, unaware of the events happening above their heads, many more held to the old adage that Midgar never _really_ slept; there was hubbub and hustle, commotion and chaos going on all over, as people discussed the bombing, mostly in tones of horror. Rufus had put in years of work establishing AVALANCHE as a benevolent force in the slums; now many wondered if he was a liar, or if Shinra had been tricked, or a million other things.

Cloud Strife, whom no less a personage than Andrea Rhodea had described as the most ironically-named man in Midgar, was not one of those people, though he was watching the same television broadcasts. He was silent, and his attention focused entirely on his task, thoughts revolving around AVALANCHE and their needs.

After a disaster like this... they'd need comfort. For Rufus, that meant alcohol. Rufus liked his liquor. Too much. The pub manager, cook, bartender and financial backer of AVALANCHE- to the extent that AVALANACHE had backers, or that he had finances to do it with- was not the only person who had to tell Rufus enough was enough, at times, or get him to eat more than he drank.

Rufus was very young to be an alcoholic, but he was also very young to do all the other things he'd done; perhaps it was only fair that similar vices should accompany his virtues.

For him, Cloud removed a bottle of sake from a hidden place in his bar, a precious thing won in a game of cards with Madam M herself, back when he'd been a cook in Wall Market. She'd been a horribly sore loser, and hearing her dainty geisha's mouth spit profanities was one of Cloud's fondest memories.

( To her credit, she'd paid promptly, and with no attempt to deny him his prize- a fair woman, for all her anger.)

He put it on the bar, and did not bother with a cup; if Rufus wanted to drink himself stupid tonight, after everything that had happened, Cloud would let him. It would not be the first time Cloud had propped a drunk in a corner of his pub and let him sleep off too much drink, with a gentle casting of poisona thrown in so that the unfortunate individual did not unduly harm themselves in the meantime.

(The little healing materia in Cloud's bracer had saved more livers than most surgeons, at this point.)

Of the three once-Turks, Rude was the easiest. Rude didn't need anything; he did not drink, as far as Cloud knew, and he prepared meals at home with some skill. He'd be okay, the quiet man would absorb his pain, deal with it, and move on, the very picture of mature stoicism.

Reno and Elena, however, would require food. Both were... Cloud struggled to think of a kindly way to put it. Five years of actively trying to be nicer, however, did not help in this instance; with a sigh as he pulled out some pots and pans, he was forced to privately admit that both Reno and Elena were disasters as people.

Reno would plain forget to eat after this; he'd go home and wallow in shame and self-doubt. The problem with a fiery personality was that, sometimes, the fire went _out,_ and Reno would be a mess until he recovered, quiet and sad.

Elena, meanwhile, would not forget to eat, but what she'd eat was unhealthy; she'd take whatever crappy pre-packaged meals she could throw into boiling water and call food, all downed with cup after cup of the cheap hooch she bought wholesale from the local moonshiners, trying to eat her emotions or drown them.

If it went on long enough, her latest set of roommates would kick her out like the last set had, and she'd once more get stuck shacking up with Rude for a while.

A bit of good old Nibelheim cooking didn't make the situation better, nor would it stop either of their spirals... but it would give them something else to focus on, and needing to pick up the dishes left behind would give Cloud an excuse to come by later and help them work through their spirals. Rufus had great planning, but his interpersonal skills needed work; an officer, not a sergeant.

So Cloud set about cooking. Not like he had anything better to do, except watch the TV... and wait.

Meals for Elena were easy. She loved eating, but she also had the intensely discriminating palate of a famine-stricken rat; Elena would eat _anything._ Cloud found it almost impressive, the way nothing she ate ever fazed her. She appreciated good cooking, or at last said she did, but Cloud had never doubted his chef's talents more than when he'd seen her eat his finest creations and Shinra-packaged mystery meat with the exact same enthusiasm.

At least she was always effusive with her praise for his cooking.

Reno's tastes were more exacting, both because they pretty much _had_ to be, and because Reno was a dramatic person who enjoyed having specific favorites, mostly so he could talk about them. He'd started out preferring Wutai food, which years in Wall Market's kitchens had prepared Cloud for well... but Cloud had gotten him to eat a bit of good old Nibelheim cooking too, the heavy mountaineer cuisine of his Western home.

Not popular over here, these days. Not after the war. But... it was a piece of home, and Cloud had, slowly, been introducing the people to his home's delicacies, even as the majority of food in his establishment was Wutai and Midgardian in nature.

What people liked always surprised him. Lady pea salad had never taken off, and neither had the fresh squash blossoms, which he'd assumed would do well; but the _coleslaw,_ of all things, that people went crazy for, to the point he had jars of the stuff just sitting around, marinating and getting tastier. A bit of sweet tea and chess pie always sold well, that was the extent of his ability to bring his native food to this foreign land...

He popped open his icebox, a great beast behind the counter. He'd like to have a freezer, but he'd never saved up enough cash for it. Inside, a variety of ingredients looked back at him, including fresh vegetables- the Planet protect whoever was growing those. Chocobo Sam, repaying Cloud for a favor, had hooked him up with a farmer here in the Slums who made fresh greens, though the farmer valued their privacy so much that Cloud had no idea who it was. Chocobo Sam did, but he never spoke of it, only joked about long hair in a way that made Cloud think it must be a woman.

Regardless, the farmer was worth all the money Cloud paid them, and then some- their food was excellent. Cloud had gotten a fresh shipment of vegetables in just yesterday, Rufus warning him that shipments might be impeded soon and he should get his supplies in while he could.

( Rufus, who had not wanted all this to happen... Rufus. Cloud's heart ached for the younger man.)

Out came a few things of coleslaw, a few jars of sweet tea, two slices of chess pie that had survived the dinner rush last night. He withdrew some chocobo meat, and got his heavy, cast iron pan going as he shut his icebox's lid, getting the other ingredients out of his cabinets, preparing the mixture that would coat the chocobo and let him fry it up until the skin crackled and crispy fried chocobo could be put into the small lunches he was making. Good, hearty, something Midgardians liked and still tasty cold- which was an important consideration in the summer heat. Something for them to eat while they laid low that didn't need prepping.

The cookbooks along his far wall went unused. Rarities, things he'd collected over the years, describing the food of his homeland through foreign eyes; things that had, in their ass-backwards way, taught him about his own home, which his younger, angrier self had dismissed far too readily.

Now, he didn't need them. Half a decade on, he cooked by memory and feel, the way his own mother had.

( His tribute to her, that good woman with all her good advice and good food both, whom he'd never appreciated until after the war. Thank the Planet that he'd had a little time with her, to make up for his foolishness, before the fire took it all away.)

As he dipped the chicken and rolled it in the flour, the television in his bar flashed through images of the disaster. Destroyed streets, screaming citizens, a special report by Shinra that AVALANCHE was responsible, showing Heidegger's enraged face as he swore vengeance. Emergency services in the streets, overwhelmed, people crying as the corpses that had once been loved ones were removed from the wreckage that had, once, been a home.

...It reminded Cloud of the war.

He wondered if Tifa was thinking the same thing.

Tifa.

He paused his work, thinking.

What was she thinking about, right now?

He'd been so happy to see her- and she'd... she'd looked so _normal_ , just sitting there at the train stop. Sitting there like she was supposed to be there, five years after she was supposed to have died with Nibelheim, seemed like anyone else, just waiting for her train to arrive.

But... for all that, so much had _changed_ , since they'd run away from home together. The turning point of his life, at fourteen, making the trip to Costa del Sol so they could join the other hopefuls being shipped to Midgar, packed like sardines in the can of the freight ship's hold, Tifa coming with him for reasons Cloud himself had never been able to figure out. Getting to Midgar, Tifa lying about her age, they'd joined the same day...

...But then she'd qualified for SOLDIER and he hadn't, and they'd slipped away from each other. Two years, him stuck as a grunt, an angry child soldier growing ever angrier hearing about the girl he'd traveled with growing into a legend. They'd even brought her teacher back in, barracks rumor said, to finish her training, and he remembered ranting and screaming about her special treatment... he'd earned a month of washing dishes and cleaning latrines for that.

3rd Class to 2nd Class to 1st, finally, they'd had a ceremony, she was famous- the country girl from the Western Continent, who had been tested by Midgar's best, and not found wanting. She'd been on television; seeing her standing up there, being awarded her promotion by President Shinra himself, had _snapped_ something in him, and Cloud had earned himself a stint in the brig for breaking the company television with his bare hands.

Then come the war.

...He wondered what her experience of it had been, as he set out one more plate, and began making more chicken. She'd always liked it as a kid, to the extent he could remember her particular tastes, to the extent that, as kids, they'd _had_ particular tastes. The war had taught him to appreciate home-cooking; when the only food you ate for weeks was Shinra pre-packaged crap, you began to long for paprika and pepper.

Love for his hometown's food wasn't the only thing the war had taught him. It taught him his own smallness, and life's randomness, had pulled the arrogant and hurting heart out of him and pummeled it until there was nothing left. It had taken the first world war to teach Cloud that he meant nothing, in the grand scheme of things, but at least _something_ had broken through to him.

Perhaps it would be different if his experience hadn't been so nasty. But nasty it had been; he'd been in the shit since the start. Cloud had no notable qualities or advantages, was just a guy, and so he had been on the frontlines from beginning to end.

The very frontmost line, in fact- he'd been a scout, since so much of the Western Continent was mountains, and he was familiar with them. His Nibelheim heritage, which provided that very familiarity, worked against him, too- Nibelheim had joined the war on the Western Alliance's side, after all, and so the company found him and his Western heritage... expendable.

He'd been sent in first, crawling forward over rocky trails that could barely be called passable, worried that each step hid a mine, that each ridge held a sniper, that around every corner he would find the ambush that would kill him.

If it hadn't been for Zack...

He put away the warm burst in his heart, thinking of the man who'd saved his life so many times, and whom he'd had the _worst_ crush on. _Focus, Cloud._

That had been his experience of the war. But... what was the war like for a 1st Class SOLDIER? He doubted it much resembled anything he'd seen. He'd never fought a Raven, for example, or any of the other weird super-science that both sides employed during the war, seeking any advantage possible.

What had she done, in the war?

( Killed Zack, according to some rumors, though Cloud carefully, cautiously put those away. Lot of stories about Zack's end, and Tifa's fist was just how _some_ of them ended... and he would never ask. Too much to handle. He knew his limits.)

And, of course, there were the parts of her life that didn't happen in bloodshed. She'd been _Aerith's_ partner. The crème de la crème; Tifa had hobnobbed with the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world, she knew people by name that, to Cloud, were exalted figures. Fancy meetings with top-quality chefs, from all over the world.

What had she eaten, at those meals? What was she missing, now that she was down here in the slums again, going from riches to rags?

...He didn't know, but he could, at least, prepare for her a fine Nibelheim meal.

He went back to his freezer and pulled out a few more things, to make a more traditional meal for her than he'd prepare for these Midgardians- potatoes and a few apples, bought at great expense from a traveling Kalm grocer. He'd fry those up with some sugar and cinnamon, and he'd peel the potatoes, mash'em up. If he had time he'd make biscuits, but as it stood, this would have do.

He hoped she'd like it.

So Cloud cooked, and wondered what the future would bring.


	7. Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Blood. TW: Combat. TW: Animal cruelty (not done by our heroes, of course, but Shinra testing is what it is.)
> 
> Tifa has an explosively violent first day as a mercenary.

**Chapter Seven**

**Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum**

Tifa awoke the next morning in an unfamiliar, and _extremely_ uncomfortable, bed.

She blinked, her brain still rebooting from sleep, and looked around, completely devoid of context. The part of her brain that knew where she was hadn't woken up yet, so she took a glance around, veteran's mind swiftly processing the available information.

The place was run-down; well-maintained, but it was clear that its owner had been fighting a losing war with time and poverty for a while. They had slowed down the decay, but couldn't stop it; there were little runnels and cracks everywhere, a thin smell of mildew and cleaning supplies that indicated past battles between maintenance and disarray, walls that were just off-white enough to need new paint, alongside furniture that might have been new when Tifa left Nibelheim to join SOLDIER. The bed she was in would have been more comfortable if she'd taken off her armor before slumping down in it last night; she was used to sleeping in armor, but that didn't mean she liked it any better than she ever had.

The place was two rooms. A bathroom with a cracked mirror, shower, and toilet, all viciously scrubbed and meticulously clean- it was probably the cleanest part of the entire apartment- and this bedroom, which had a nightstand and something _like_ a closet, alongside a small icebox. There was light coming in through the window; just a little, the kind that said it was very early morning, the sun just now peeking over the horizon. In a few moments it would hit the Plate in full and the slums would be thrown in darkness again, at least until the great sun lamps kicked on... but for now, the natural gift of light was slipping into the slums, secretive and sweet as a forbidden lover's kiss.

Her mind caught up with her situation. _Cloud, the apartment, that old woman._ Few harsher glares had Tifa received in her life than the one the old woman gave her last night, apparently not trusting her with Cloud- and that was odd, to stand near Cloud and be the one people glared at. That wasn't how it had worked back home, all those years ago...

So much had changed. Cloud had provided an apartment for her, free of charge. Cloud, whom she remembered as a bitter, angry kid, who had been unfairly judged back home for trying to save Tifa from her own stupidity. Cloud, who now was... apparently of some importance, owned his own business, was beloved by others. That old woman's distrust and distaste- that was fueled by _love_ , Tifa recognized that kind of protective, fierce anger. She was worried for Cloud, and worried that Tifa was dangerous...

Tifa sat up, and when she did so, her face came into view in the bathroom mirror. Underneath long hair sat burning mako eyes, the pupils slitted just enough that people had to look twice, and see the cat-like nature of those eyes.

No clearer sign of SOLDIER existed than those feline eyes. Tifa huffed a laugh. The old woman was right; Tifa _was_ dangerous.

Still, last night she hadn't much processed the old woman's glare; Cloud had handed her a plate of food that she'd barely looked at, and then she'd crashed here, too tired to do much save put the food in the icebox, the rest of the night full of dreamless sleep.

She shook her head, clearing it of any lingering sleep, and stretched her aching joints. She should not have slept in her SOLDIER armor... then again, she had no other clothes. She should put some of her gil towards clothes... Planet knew she needed to wash her current outfit. Even in the slums, people noticed if you never changed clothes.

She took a quick sniff of herself. Hmm. Maybe if she sprayed herself down with something, cover up the smell of sweat and blood and machine oil. Battle- one of the best ways to get truly filthy, fast.

The bathroom had few things for ablutions. Toilet paper, of the rough, sandpapery kind that Shinra sold in bulk, and which Tifa privately suspected had been made to punish poor people. Behind the mirror was a bottle of headache medicine, mostly empty and completely out of date, alongside a single unmarked glass cologne bottle with a bit of brown liquid inside and a sprayer on top- a quick sniff of the cap let Tifa recognize it as a cedar-scented cologne, popular some years back. Towels, which Tifa, to her own amusement and surprise, _recognized_ ; they had the mark of one of Shinra's upper-class hotel chains, of the kind she'd slept in so often while traveling with Aerith, made of fine cloth. These were threadbare and clearly at the end of their lives; scavenged from a dump, Tifa guessed. The washcloth was much the same, though from a different, less prominent hotel chain, but the soap was not a cast-off; no, it was obviously homemade, a round lump that didn't resemble Shinra's square products, and smelled surprisingly good. It was jet-black, which was a weird color for soap, but it smelled sweetly of roasted peanuts and honey and did its job of cleansing her.

She wondered who'd made it, as she cleaned off, the water heavy with the iron tang of the half-broken pipes that carried it. She flicked red streaks of dead men's blood out of her hair, the mess having dried on the long train ride back to Sector 7, now thick and clinging and needing minutes of scrubbing, which Tifa devoted herself to.

The problem of having long hair; Zangan would have yelled at her for it. Long hair was a huge disadvantage in combat, something by which enemies could catch you, and Tifa knew it. Still... at a certain point she'd gotten so _good_ at fighting that she'd... well, she'd gotten kind of taunting about it. Wearing her hair long was her way of accentuating her femininity and making a point of her skill- _I can wear the stupidest possible hairstyle for combat, and still beat you._

( Aerith had long hair too, but given how she fought, it was less of a liability; not many people got close enough to Aerith to catch anything but their death of cold, those thick icy spikes Aerith had favored, showcasing her talent as a sorceress par excellence.)

Tifa recalled conversations with Lucrecia and Vincent, the entire Valentine family long-haired, discussing different care techniques. All the product she'd used back then... shampoos and conditioners and oils. Between the two of them, her and Aeris had carried a small army of hair care products between them, everywhere they went, Nanaki mocking both of them...

Now, now she just had this homemade soap, which would probably leave her with terrible dandruff. She'd always been prone to flakes. Aeris would mock her, if she could see her now.

_Don't call her Aeris_ , she reminded herself. _Don't use the nickname._

It hurt less, if she didn't use the nickname.

She dried off on towels that she, belatedly, realized she might have used before, back when they were new, and felt an uncomfortable kind of kinship with the ragged things. Like them, she'd went from the heights of the Plate and the world's elite to an apartment in the slums...

Weird feeling, to identify with the presumed journey of cloth, but Tifa lived a weird life.  
  


She finished drying off and threw her uniform back on, taking a moment to fiddle with the belts. She'd had to repair it on the fly while making her way to Midgard; it was still broken from her fight with Aertih, and keeping the parts in rough alignment was a job for a blacksmith, not a SOLDIER. She'd compensated with the belts of various Shinra goons who'd come after her, a bit of glue she'd bought from a wandering merchant, and some impromptu soldering work, using the lightning materia in her gloves to heat some scrap metal to the point it melted and then slapping the resultant goo on the most damaged parts of her her vest.

It more or less worked, though her armor was now very much like a helicopter- not so much a solid piece as it was a group of objects flying in close formation. Better than nothing, at any rate.

She sniffed it again. Ugh. Not clean, but at least she was clean under it, which would have to do... but there _was_ that cologne bottle.

What the hell. Tifa grabbed it and gave herself a quick baptism. Not her usual choice of scent, but...

_Better than nothing,_ she thought, with a bit of a grin. It looked like that applied to armor and smells both.

A quiet knock came at the door as she finished; if she'd been asleep, it wouldn't have woken her.

She went to the door, peering out the peephole- just Cloud. She opened the door, surprising him mid-knock.”

“ Hey!” he said, recovering quickly, and giving her a big, beautiful smile. “ Good morning! Shouldn't be surprised a SOLDIER was already up, I guess.”

He put a hand behind his head and smiled wider, eyes shut, and for a long moment, Tifa just _looked_ at him, standing there with the sun rising behind him, smiling that beautiful smile.

_Danger_ , some part of her whispered, _don't trust him, you trusted Aeris, you trusted Shinra, don't trust him!_

The cold walls came down again, smashing the hot embers to pieces.

“ I guess,” she said, trying to stay cool, even as she argued with herself. _It's Cloud. What's he going to do? Sulk at me?_

“ At any rate,” Cloud said, moving over her quiet and stoic tone with practiced ease (Tifa was not the only socially-awkward person Cloud knew), “ I thought, if you're starting a new life as a mercenary, you should get known around town! The more people who know you, the more opportunities will trickle in. Nobody down here has much money, so you need to have the broadest possible customer base if you want to make any real gil. Take me, for example- my pub doesn't make much money per customer, but it gets a _lot_ of customers, so we make a small profit.”

...That was reasonable. Also not something she thought Cloud would think of. The Cloud in her memories was... angry, he didn't smile like this one did, he had pain inside him. This one seemed... exorcised, somehow, cleansed.

_I'm not the only one who's changed,_ Tifa thought.

_So don't trust him,_ came the other voice. _Not just yet. You don't know_ ** _this_** _Cloud._

Then he smiled again, and Tifa forgot some of her reservations.

“ How do you propose I get known?” Tifa asked, keeping her tone level and quiet.

_Dumbass, what are you doing?_ part of her said. _Just 'cause he's cute doesn't mean you lose your damn mind!_

_I don't have to trust him just yet,_ she told that paranoid voice. _But I don't have to_ ** _dis_** _trust him, either. I can just... play it safe. Not like I know anyone else in town._

_Be careful,_ her fear said, acknowledging her points.

Unaware of the argument in Tifa's skull, Cloud gave her a big smile. “ I'll introduce you! I have to deliver some water filters around town, and while I'm doing that, we'll _coincidentally_ set you up at the neighborhood watch. They'll be your best customers. Sector 7's one of the worst slums down here- we're near the dumps, so we're always drawing in beasts. There's always _some_ damn monster out here that needs killing- I don't know where they keep coming from. Almost makes me believe the conspiracy theorists- they say it's all an experiment, then they talk about secret Shinra labs under our feet.”

“ I mean, there is,” Tifa said, before realizing, belatedly, that she shouldn't have said that, as Cloud's eyes widened.

“ I... _what?_ ” Cloud said slowly.

“ It's... it's probably not responsible for the monsters,” Tifa said, trying to shut the conversation down. “ They mostly do human enhancement. What you're describing- releasing monsters to attack slum dwellers- not Lucrecia's style.”

“ ...Tifa, I... I hate to be this guy,” Cloud said, face growing more and more concerned, “ because I can tell you don't want to talk about this, but I feel like... I feel like maybe we _should_ talk about this. There's a secret lab under the slums?”

“ Yes,” she said, sighing. Ugh, she'd _just_ decided not to trust Cloud, and here she was, tossing out Shinra's deepest secrets like it was idle chatter. Not that she had any loyalty to Shinra left, but this wasn't the kind of thing you just _talked_ about. “ Deepground. Some... Dr. Hobo or something, started it. Some nobody. He died, and Lucrecia took it over... they do human enhancement stuff. Unless you're fighting people, it's not Deepground.”

“ ...Would it be someone else?” Cloud asked. “ Shinra does a lot of horrible things, and if we could stop the monsters from showing up, the people would be a lot safer. I mean, they might just be wandering in from outside, attracted to the dump, but if they're being deliberately released...”

“...Might be Dr. Hollander,” Tifa demurred. Lucrecia had _hated_ that guy, though Tifa had never known why. “ But I'd need to know more.”

Cloud nodded, and accepted that Tifa wanted to stop talking about it.

“ Okay, we'll table that talk for later,” he said. “ Let's hit the town, then- have you eaten? If not, I-”

Whatever else he was going to say was interrupted as the apartment door next to Tifa's popped open with enthusiasm, and a young man stepped out. He wore a white jacket over otherwise ordinary clothes, edged with pink trim.

“ Ah,” he said, as he spread his arms wide, as though he would embrace the whole world. “ What a fine morning!”

Turning to Tifa and Cloud, he revealed a cheerful, smiling countenance... and white eyes with no pupil. Tifa recoiled as her slitted mako eyes met those blank orbs.

“ Greetings, fellow descendants!” the man said cheerfully before bowing. “ How is this morning on our fine Planet?”

“ It's good, Marco,” Cloud said. “ How's it going?”

“ Reviving the ways of the Cetra is an all-consuming task, I fear, but I am not disheartened, Worthy!” Marco said to him before turning to Tifa and extending a hand. “ My apologies, I have not introduced myself. This body is called Marco. May I know what to call you, stranger?”

Tifa, rattled, did not raise her hand to shake his. “ ...Tifa.”

Marco's good mood was not shaken by her cold reaction, withdrawing his hand in good humor. “ It is good to meet you! I hope we grow into unity. If you ever need anything, feel free to knock on my door at any time! It is the duty of all descendants to aid one another; it is how we become Worthy.”

“ ...Ok,” Tifa said, still searching for pupils to look at in the man's empty eyes. Her eyes might be strange since the mako treatments, but at least she _had_ pupils...

“ My eyes disturb you?” the man said, his never-ending smile turning a bit knowing.

“ Tifa,” Cloud said disapprovingly, and the sheer surprise of _Cloud_ telling her not to be rude shocked Tifa into responding.

“ ...Sorry,” she said.

“ It is alright,” Marco replied with a laugh. “ Many are disturbed at first. But it is a blessing! When we eat of the holy flower, of the sweet asphodel, our pupils are taken from us and replaced with white. A good color, white. All colors, blending into one, united and holding back the empty black of death. A color of life most Holy! It does not affect our eyesight unduly, though I have heard the learned comment that it _should_. That it does not is merely another miracle, a blessing from the Planet.”

Flower... Tifa's eyes went down to her armor where, sure enough, the flower that strange farm boy had given her sat, surprisingly unharmed for all that it had went through.

Marco followed her gaze, and frowned at seeing it. “ No, that is not one of our holy flowers. The sacred asphodels are white. That flower... purple-black... arrogant colors. Only the Worthy can wear such colors, for they have proven they are no enemies to the greater Unity. Worthy receive colors, for there's is a special place, separated out of the greater mass of the White- a privilege _and_ a burden.”

Then he smiled, as Tifa stared at him. She had _no_ idea what he was going on about, but that smile looked... oddly familiar, alongside that specific cocking of the head.

“ Still, do forgive me- I think you are Worthy indeed. Sable fits you, perhaps.”

With that, he up and left, walking down the stairs. Tifa watched him go.

“ You probably have questions,” Cloud said, and Tifa nodded her head.

“ Just one,” Tifa said. “ What the hell?”

“ They're called the Descendants,” Cloud said. “ Full term is the Descendants of the Ancient Cetra, but everyone just calls them Descendants. They believe humans to be a fallen form of the Cetra- what everyone else calls the Ancients- and that by good deeds a human can return to being a Cetra.”

“ Never heard of them before,” Tifa said.

“ They're a new religion in town,” Cloud said. “ Started showing up about... four years ago? Nobody knows where their main church is located- rumor places it on the Western Continent- but they're good people. They've got a lot of Wutai in their ranks, but they're not really tied to one ethnic group or another. Diligent workers, always willing to help out, never start fights- really, they're... lovely people.”

“ I'm sensing a _but_ in there,” Tifa said. Cloud nodded.

“ Okay, they... they super creep me out,” he said. “ They feel... hollow. Empty. Like they've lost something. Something's _off_ in them.”

“ The eyes don't help,” Tifa said.

“ Tifa!” Cloud admonished. “ You are the _last_ person who can talk about somebody's eyeballs!”

...He had her there, and she shrugged, acknowledging the point.

“ Let's get going, anyway,” Cloud said. “ Have you eaten?”

“ No,” Tifa said.

“ If you're hungry, we can grab something,” Cloud said. “ Pub's not open yet but there's a few little places to eat down here. Wymer's brother's husband runs a mean breakfast place, and it's all Corelian food, so you might like it.”

Corelian... yes, she could go for some Corelian. The food was like Nibelheim's food, but spicier, less chicken and more beef, the good and hearty kind of food a coal miner needed. She'd been stationed there for a while during the war- even met the mayor, who was a Shinra exec now, which was weird. He hadn't seemed the type.

“ I could eat,” she said, before remembering she had no gil. “ I need to get paid first.”

“ Rufus will pay you as soon as he's both conscious and not dying from a hangover,” Cloud said. “ I'll cover you for now.”

“ Oh, I couldn't,” Tifa said, but Cloud just laughed.

“ It ain't free! You have to come with me and be my bodyguard while I'm delivering the filters- too many people think _nice_ means _pushover_. So you might be punching somebody- consider it your first mercenary job in town.”

Tifa shrugged. “ Good enough for me.”

Down the metal stairs they went, Cloud waving at the old woman at stair's bottom as they passed- her glaring at Tifa, who shrunk under her gaze. Gah, she'd fought actual monsters, and that woman's glare was still kinda spooky.

They walked the streets, and Tifa watched the people around her as they went. People gave Tifa a few glances, mostly wary; the people of the slums were well aware of their status as the lowest of human prey, and their instincts warned them that she was a potential predator, even before they got to her mako-greened eyes. That almost never failed to produce a double-take, which was as depressing as it was amusing. If she'd been by herself, Tifa had no doubt they'd be giving her a wide berth- some did anyway.

But Cloud's presence with her produced an array of reactions, mostly unexpected. Some were put at _ease,_ trusting Cloud and choosing to trust Tifa if he did so; they did not dodge around her, and some even waved at her, which Tifa did not quite trust herself to return. Others looked at Cloud, then at Tifa, and seemed to decide that he'd been tricked, giving Tifa glares of warning, the visual equivalent of speeches starting with “don't you ever hurt him.” Kin of the old woman at the apartment in that, if Tifa didn't miss her guess. Some seemed determined to warn Cloud about her, asking him quickly whispered questions out of her hearing, Cloud trying to assuage their fears in the same whispered tones.

Others- the ones who were most careless and foolish- came over to talk to Cloud without paying Tifa the slightest attention, and despite their total lack of caution around her, it was clear from their actions towards Cloud that they respected his opinion, that they liked him, all hands clapped onto backs, friendly thumbs-up, and one dumbass redhead calling him “bro” constantly- though that last had obviously checked her out, and asked for her name, which she hadn't given. His dumbassery was a plague, and she did not intend to catch it.

A rare few individuals they met on their long walk were even jealous, seeing her and Cloud together and making certain... assumptions. Tifa felt obscurely pleased by such reactions, though they were... premature at best.

Still, her eyes roamed his form, and found much to admire in his androgynous, graceful features- and his new habit of smiling often, his general better cheer, that made him prettier than he had ever been, enhanced all the rest of it.

She noticed he was surprisingly muscular; he must work out.

All this and more Tifa saw, as they swam against the current of this great sea of humanity, heading towards Cloud's pub. So many people down here, a scattered mix of every kind of human being; the dark black skin of Corel's people next to the paler olives of tan Junon, pale Wutai ex-patriates rubbing elbows with Midgar's blonde natives, voices with the lilt of Mideel's sing-song language hawking products from distant Costa del Sol. They said the whole world met at Midgar...

Cloud handled it with aplomb and deliberate cheer, a sure captain as he sailed them both through the great ocean of people, his smiles as much of a choice as Tifa's own cold reserve. He moved with a social deftness Tifa would never have associated with him before, and everyone who saw him gave a friendly wave and a smile. People chatted excitedly with him about the mundane trivia of their lives and he knew them back, always with a friendly word or piece of advice, always listened to.

...Cloud was _beloved_ down here, and that was stranger than all the rest of it. Her memories of the boy Cloud had been did not mix with this new man before her, save in little things; he _had_ smiled like that, but only once or twice, not this often, constant as the sun. He was a minor celebrity down here, the big man around town...

And Tifa was the quiet, conflicted person trailing behind him. Huh. The times, they had indeed changed.

The Corelian restaurant- named _Canary's Last Meal_ \- was doing brisk business, the smell of fresh meat and fine spices overwhelming the generally poor smell of the slums in its immediate area. There as quite a line, but it grew shorter as Cloud approached, people moving aside for him despite his protests. The chef behind the counter waved as Cloud approached.

“ Cloud! And a friend! How are you two doing this morning?” he asked cheerfully.

“ Doing good,” Cloud said. “ How's your family doing?”

“ Good!” the black man said. “ Though I'm glad Wybel is the one with the kids, I never was much good with children. I can barely handle the damn teenagers I employ.”

One such damn teenager, a Wutai girl of sixteen, stuck her tongue out at him as she passed, carrying food to a customer at one of the few tables the open-air diner had.

“ Pay me better and I'd be nicer!”

“ If I had the money, Yuffie, I'd live on the Plate, and you'd be out of a job!” he snarked back with a smile before turning to Cloud. “ Just hired that one and she's all sharp tongue and jokes, I swear. Kids these days. Heh, always wanted to say that! Anyway, what do you and your lady friend want, Cloud?”

“ The usual for me,” Cloud said, turning to Tifa. “ What do you want?”

“ I'll... just have whatever you have,” she said.

“ Two miner's delights, then,” the man said, as he turned his back to them to get to work on his stove. “ Classic Corelian food- simple, hearty, easily packed, mostly bread, and portable so you can haul it down into the earth. If you're a coal miner or an iron miner, whatever kind of dirt you dig, you can't go wrong with a miner's delight. Should be prepared with beef, but cow's hard to come by on the Eastern Continent, so I make mine with rabbit, raise the little guys right at home. The bread I get from this baker in Sector 5, woman has the best bread. No idea where she gets the grains.”

“ Be warned, newcomer,” the waitress said as she returned, picking up a tray one of the chef's Corelian employees had just finished preparing. “ Lynel's favorite topics are Corelian history and food, and he never stops talking.”

“ More betrayal from my newest employee!” Lynel announced without turning around, with no real venom. “ I'll get my husband's brother to shoot you yet, girl, you're a public menace! Get wanted posters put up, pay a bounty to be free of your foolishness. I'll hire that assassin been making the rounds, what'd they call him- the Mystery Ninja!”

“ Leviathan's fins, I hate that name,” the serving girl complained. “ The Mystery Ninja! Could the newspapers get any lazier? That's not even bare minimum effort, it's not! Besides, you don't make enough money to hire the Ninja.”

“ I could put up some of the cash,” Cloud said, before turning to the waitress. “ Good to see you again, Yuffie. How'd you end up working here?”

“ You know me,” the teenager said, favoring him with a grin. “ Always on the move- Lynel needed hands, so here I am.”

“ You know this one, Cloud?” Lynel asked.

“ She's good people,” Cloud said. “ I've never known her to hold a job longer than a month, but she's a good worker while she's here.”

“ So I don't have to put up with her long? Huzzah! You are a bearer of good news, my friend,” the chef said.

The youngster laughed at this assessment, returning to her work, and soon the chef had handed Cloud and Tifa their meals, a strange thing of lean meat and spicy sauce packed inside a hollowed out loaf of hearty wheat bread, accompanied by a couple of bottles of generic Shinra soda.

“ Eat with your hands,” Cloud said. “ We'll munch as we walk- pop the soda, then just munch on the delight like an apple. Kinda drink the sauce a bit, get some bread and meat. Here.”

He demonstrated, popping the tab of his pop quickly with one hand before lifting the bread roll in the other and sucking some of it down, all without spilling anything. Tifa followed suit.

It was... surprisingly good, rich and spicy, though Tifa could tell it would have been better with a heavier meat. The lack of cow was telling, she suspected; but still, it was delightful.

They ate as they walked, finishing their breakfasts just as they got to the pub. _The Buster Pub and Grill_ , the sign, shaped like the sword of a man Tifa had killed, declared. Tifa's eyes shied away from the sign; too many feelings there. She still remembered Aeris' face, right before she left to let them have their last moment together...

_Aerith_ , she sternly reminded herself. _Don't use the nickname. She was never your friend._

She wasn't sure _how_ Cloud was getting away with such an openly political statement as his pub's name and sign, but then again, the slums of Midgar were not exactly the most pro-Shinra establishments on the Planet... or maybe nobody in a position to destroy him could _believe_ it. Zack, dead all these years, was still a symbol of rebellion... who would be so bold as to name their pub after his famous, iconic weapon?

Up the wooden stairs, into the wide dining area, Cloud rummaging around behind his counter to produce strange devices.

“ What are these?” Tifa asked, picking up one of the metal devices. Inside was charcoal, what looked like a set of coffee filters, and... other things she couldn't quite identify. Science wasn't her strong point, save what she'd absorbed by accident from knowing the Valentines for years.

“ Water purifiers!” Cloud said. “ Water's always a problem down here. The water quality down here is poor- without these filters, the water can make people sick, especially kids. I make these and sell them at-cost. Community service, basically.”

Tifa quirked an eyebrow, but was helpless to do anything but trail after him as he went to the general store, which was having a sale on canned food. A quick discussion on G rations ensued, the owner a veteran like Cloud, both having an enjoyable talk bitching about the terrible canned food Shinra had distributed to its frontline soldiers during the War.

Tifa, a fellow vet, did not have the heart to say she had never eaten G rations, because SOLDIERs, especially 1st Class SOLDIERs, and _especially_ especially Aerith's partner, got better treatment.

Then to the apartment complex, where the old woman smiled at Cloud like he was her favorite kid and maintained her usual stance on Tifa, who found, despite her best efforts, that she could not melt into the ground and get away from the old woman's fierce expressions.

The weapon store was the first person to buck Cloud Tifa had seen. An older man, laden with muscles sheathed in thick fat, a long scar down his face indicating an encounter that had nearly ended his life. He sat behind a metal grate as his customers and employees worked nearby, a firing range and a practice area set up so weapons could be tested by makers and potential buyers both.

“ The filter didn't work!” he said, all fury and bluster. “ I ain't paying you for shit!”

“ Well, I can't say why the last one failed,” Cloud said politely, “ but this one'll work.”

“ I ain't paying you for it,” he said. “ I also want my money back for the last one!”

“ I could just give you this one for free,” Cloud suggested, but the man shook his head.

“ I ain't falling for that smooth-talking shit! Give me my money back!”

...Well, Tifa'd had just about enough of _this_ self-important little shit.

“ Want me to talk to him?” Tifa asked. If Cloud wanted her to be his bodyguard, she should probably act like hired muscle _should_.

“ Sure,” Cloud said, as the weapon owner laughed. “ Be warned, she's my bodyguard.”

“ Please,” the merchant said, waving a hand dismissively. “ You bring in some SOLDIER scum, you think I'm scared? I'm a vet, boy! Yeah, she's got the eyes, but they were putting _anybody_ in SOLDIER towards the end. Not every one of them earned their place; and this one, she's all long hair and good looks, I bet she's all broth and no beans.”

Tifa couldn't help the mean smile that spread across her face. She'd never had Aeris' talent for quips, but she'd picked up a _few_ things from her friend over the years- and one of them was a sense of timing.

“ I'll take that bet,” she said, and snaked her hand through the metal grate to grab the man's neck, before viciously slamming him face-first against his own security bar.

“ Whoa!” Cloud said, hopping back, and his exclamation brought the rest of the weapon shop to a halt as the man staggered back, howling. “ Tifa, what the hell?”

“ You said I should talk to him,” she said, put on the spot as everyone looked at her. The man, nose now bent at a fun new angle, gushed blood everywhere behind his counter.

“ Mother- _fucker!_ ' the guy bellowed, as he reached over for a nearby green materai.

“ Talk, not... Gaia's teeth, Elmer, I'm so sorry!” Cloud said, hands raised placatingly. “ I didn't know she'd do that!”

“ I thought it was what I was supposed to do,” Tifa said softly, shrugging as the slum dwellers all gave her bewildered looks. She kept her own eyes on the weapon seller and his mystery materia, though; despite Cloud's reactions, if the guy started slinging spells, she'd be ready, reaching for that place inside herself where lightning dwelled, connected to the world by the materia in her gloves. He'd find her a faster spellcaster, if it came to a contest.

It proved unnecessary when the man's materia turned out to be healing; he fixed his broken nose with magic that resounded with vague green images of warfare and battle. A lover of fighting, apparently.

“ Damn, I say goddamn!” the man barked, as his nose repaired. “ I... well, shit, Cloud, you brought the real deal here!”

He started to _laugh_ , to Tifa's bewilderment. She wasn't the only one; the heads turned to her now turned to him.

“ Holy shit!” the man said. “ I'd always thought you were a wimp, Cloud, but _she_ sure as shit ain't! My apologies, ma'am, if I'd known you were a hardass, I wouldn't have said shit.”

...Tifa had _no idea_ how to react, so she finally just shrugged and said, “ No offense taken.”

“ I like that!” the man said, wiping his lips with an oiling rag he pulled out of one of the shelves behind his counter. “ 'Bout time we had another real fighter down here. Hand me that damn water filter, Cloud. Last one really _didn't_ work, but these things have been consistent so far, I suppose I can forgive one fuckup. Heh, glad to see you finally got some protection, I've always thought Rufus and his crew didn't take good enough care of you. You're the kind of guy gets in trouble, boy, too damn nice for your own good and not strong enough to handle the shit you get into.”

He gave Tifa another genuine grin. “ You, you come back now, you here? Best damn weapon shop in the slums, right here! You ever need something make you hit harder, you come on by!”

They left after that, and Cloud had no explanations for it, save one.

“ Slum folk are weird,” he said. “ But, in the future... Tifa, if I want you to beat someone up, I'll tell you, don't just... attack people, okay? I'll tell you if you need to escalate.”

“...Sorry,” Tifa said.

_This still feels so fucking weird,_ she thought _. Since when was Cloud the one apologizing for_ ** _my_** _actions?_

_...And I don't really feel... bad for hurting that guy. Not just because it worked out, but just... I... I think I'm a little too used to violence. I might want to tone that down a little._

“ Anyway,” Cloud said, “ let's get down to the neighborhood watch. Wymer'll want to meet you.”

Down, down into the depths of the slums, towards something that was half police department, half firefighting station, and half again a junkpile, because even the nicest places in the slums were separated from the trash in the dump only by force of will. A group of residents were currently gathered around an imposing man of Corelian descent- imposing not by height or size, for he was quite average in both, but in demeanor. He reminded Tifa of the best officers she'd met, the ones who had been worthy of their position in Shinra's army, the same kind of tone and seriousness.

...Actually, judging from their guns- all old Shinra hand-me-downs from the War- and the way people seemed to unconsciously defer to him, he might have _been_ one of those officers.

“ Wymer!” Cloud said, yelling to be heard above the group. “ What's the occasion?”

“ Monster loose in the dumps,” Wymer said. “ Different than any we've seen before- bigger and nastier. Like a kind of... angelic dog. It ate the local rats, then it ate the wererats that tried to kill it for eating the smaller ones, then it found that big dog we've never been able to drive out and it ate _that_ one, too.”

“ Oh, I don't like that,” Cloud said. “ What's it doing now?”

“ Heading this way,” Wymer said. “ The only reason it's not already got into town is because it keeps pausing to howl and bite at itself. The thing's... _wrong_. I've never seen anything like this. Cloud, if you could go grab your sword, it'd be a real help.”

“ I brought something better than my sword,” Cloud said. “ Tifa, introduce yourself.”

“ SOLDIER, reporting for duty, sir,” she said, and snapped a salute. It felt... appropriate.

Wymer saluted back. “ A SOLDIER named Tifa? Huh. I know you said you knew Tifa Lockheart back in the day, Cloud, but... this _can't_ be her.”

“ It can be,” Tifa said. “ Reports of my death were faked- I'm the real deal. Show me this monster.”

Wymer looked her over, then nodded. “ Whether you're Tifa or lying, you've got the look of a fighter, and the eyes. Alright, Tifa. You and Cloud'll make up our frontline. The thing's fast, but it seems to have trouble with multiple targets- probably because of that face coming out of its neck. I don't think it can distinguish between individual opponents all that well- it took a while to kill the rats, but it tore that dog apart in seconds. Keep moving! We'll provide fire support. Engage it after we open- we've got a few grenades here. No idea if they work or not, but we'll start with those, and then you guys get in.”

She saluted again, and he saluted back.

“ Nice to see proper form again,” Wymer muttered before turning back to giving orders.

“ Gonna run back to the pub,” Cloud said. “ My sword's there. Don't start the festivities without me!”

The idea of Cloud in combat made Tifa's heart _ache_. “ Cloud... don't. I can handle this.”

“ I know you can,” he said, and gave her a wink. “ But I've been helping Wymer for so long, it'd feel weird not to help out. It's just another monster.”

With that, he was gone, and Tifa went through some quick check of her equipment, making sure she was ready.

( Cloud, at his bar, removed the long black case that held the one thing of true value he owned, a gift from a man of Wutai he'd found, beaten and dying, in an alley, whom he'd saved and nurtured back to health- a broken thing, but still sharp, still deadly, the silver-gray, slightly curved material shining in his hands.)

-

When time came, the neighborhood watch tried to clear everyone away from the battlefield. Most fled; some didn't, including the redheaded dumbass, who was watching from a nearby roof. Even a few kids, who'd escaped attentive parents to come see the excitement.

The watch wrote those people off. Reality of slum life; if you didn't have the damn sense to listen, they couldn't afford to waste the time trying. They were going to have their hands full in the next few seconds.

The waiting was the worst part, as it always was. Guns were checked, their owners praying that the rusted heaps of junk wouldn't break mid-fight, that the bullets would actually wound the beast. The members of the first Sector 7 Grenadier Company, newly-minted that very hour, likewise prayed, hoping the grenades would work, hoping that they wouldn't work too _soon_ and explode the second the pin was pulled, hoping they'd hit their target if it _did_ work. They were composed of the best baseball pitchers, a popular sport of Wutai brought over with the great immigration; each held their bombs carefully, ready to throw the most explosive fastballs of their lives.

The lucky few with materia went to the places inside themselves that the materia linked up to, ready with their spells, all amateur mages at best- no great sorcerers or enchantresses here, in the dirt and the grime, just a few brave hearts ready to fling fire and heal.

Wymer had set up his troops with a general's wisdom; the majority of the watch was on top of the various rocks in the area or, in one case, a relatively stable pile of junk, where they would have clear firing lanes. Those with healing materia were set up centrally so they could throw spells at anyone they could see; range depended on mage's skill, but even a good mage had trouble hitting what they couldn't see. The rest of the magic was scattered, not centralized, so the thing wouldn't wipe out all the mages at once if it took offense to being set on fire or blasted with lightning. Tifa took a swift glance, and approved.

( Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw someone- just a shadow, perched somewhere distant- but when she turned to look, that shadow had disappeared, and Tifa was just left with vague impressions that someone was watching her... and the even more vague sense that the presence was _friendly._ )

They'd debated setting up traps, but hadn't the time; Cloud had no sooner gotten back with his unusual blade then the scouts had come back, breathless, the thing almost upon them.

Tifa, who was on the ground of this impromptu arena, could hear it- it was screaming in two tongues, one the howls of a badly hurt dog, the other... the other sounded like a man's voice, screaming in wordless pain.

Tifa, who had seen more shit than nearly anyone, still had a terrible feeling that today, today she was going to see something she had never seen before, and that knowledge ached in her guts.

It had good company. Alongside that terrible knowledge was fear, fluttering like a moth in her stomach- fear not for herself, but for Cloud, who stood with her, the only other combatant on the ground. Wymer had volunteered, but Cloud had turned him down, pointed out he was better situated giving orders and keeping command- it wasn't like morale among the watch didn't need watching, they _needed_ his commanding presence to keep them from breaking.

( _You're an officer, let us grunts handle the_ ** _real_** _work,_ Cloud had said with a wink and a smile, all bravery and heroics, the white knight she'd always wanted him to be, and Tifa's heart pumped hard in her chest)

He had a strange, broken blade- a katana from Wutai, if Tifa didn't miss her guess. The blade, when complete, must have been _enormous_ , seven foot or more, she'd guess; the handle was so long Cloud could use it two-handed without any trouble at all. The blade, even broken, was three feet long.. so it wasn't a standard katana, was way too long.

She'd traveled with the Wutai Foreign Regiment for a time, and some of their words filtered through her head- there'd been a guy there who had a blade like that, said it was meant to fight off chocobo-riding cavalry and big monsters. An _ōdachi_ , she thought she'd heard him call it? She probably wasn't pronouncing that right in her head.

How Cloud had acquired such a rare blade, she couldn't imagine. True Wutai blades, forged in the old style, were rare as hen's teeth after the Wasteland was created; but this thing, it looked almost like solid water, the blade rippled and danced in the sun. The break at its top looked like a serpent's tongue, small cracks radiating from it, but the rest of the metal seemed uncompromised... though given how it shimmered and shined, she couldn't make out just _what_ it was made of. Wutai told a lot of stories about its swords, but looking at this one, Tifa wondered if there might not be truth hidden in the tales...

Down the blade's length, along the side facing her, in beautiful, ancient Wutai script, was written something that Tifa, who had learned the language, could just barely make out- _Masamune_.

She hoped it was as effective as it was beautiful.

The dual-voices grew closer. Tifa steadied herself, and wished she had barrier magic to throw on Cloud.

“ Steady, people,” Wymer said. “ Show's about to start.”

All eyes turned towards the far side of the clearing, where the creature would have to walk uphill to reach them.

The first thing she saw was the wing.

It rose, a perfect white dove's wing, but as big as a person. Beneath the wing, rising gently on the right side of the beast, was a smaller wing, as though they were cancerous tumors the beast was sprouting, coming in groups. They flapped gently, white feathers falling softly off of both, and that almost sent Tifa away inside... but no, she needed to be _here_ , now, to defend herself, so with force of will, she stood her ground.

What was underneath... had _been_ a dog, at one point. One of the Eastern breeds, that had the long, whiplike appendage directly behind their head, a feature Northern breeds didn't share. That appendage, usually ending in a blunt pad, now seemed to end in what almost looked like a cruciform _sword_ , but the edges were made of metallic feathers. The thing was big- twice the size of a human being.

The left side was mostly still that of a dog, if an inordinately muscled mastiff and oversized, though its colors were grayed out and faded- what should have been a good coat of brown was dulled, and the black eyes were rendered almost cataract-white. The dog whimpered and whined constantly.

Still, that was only one side, which was doggish enough, paws and head. The thing was lopsided, the right side almost trying to become... bipedal, hunched up, growing huge. The back leg was bent wrong, the thing shuffled forward on that leg trying to move like a human's... the front leg, bent like a dog's and then bent back _again_ , to form something not a paw and not a hand, knuckle-walking the beast forward.

Tifa barely noticed that, or the grotesque spread of the bulging pectoral muscles being built on that side, because on the right side of the dog's neck, a human face was growing. It was marred and scratched, but the features were unmistakable. The human howls were arising from that face.

“ Holy shit,” someone in the watch said, and Tifa agreed with his wise words.

It saw them, and the human face grew _angry_ , and the dog snarled, its rage at its pain given sudden focus on a new target. The duo roared, the wings flapped, and the sword tentacle flailed, carving deep gashes wherever it struck the ground or the junk nearby.

“ Okay, showtime!” Wymer yelled. “ Grenadiers, throw! Everyone, open fire!”

Guns barked as the grenadiers chucked their bombs. Fire and thunderbolts and a single deadly burst of magical poison flew through the air, though the thing ignored all but the acidic touch of the green magic; smells and sounds and visions filled the air, the personal touches every soul left on the magic they used.

Of the five grenades, one fell short, one went long, and three landed as perfect as a soldier boy's dream, right at the beast's feet.

All five grenades failed to go off.

“ Son of a bitch!” one of the grenadiers yelled. “ _None_ of them?!?”

“ Grab guns, get shooting!” Wymer yelled. “ We knew this was possible! Just keep going!”

Bullets flew, and the thing covered itself with the bigger wing. Bullets struck those feathers, but barely penetrated; the eternal problem with bullets, the trouble they'd inherited from arrows, their ancestors in function. Tifa remembered Vincent complaining of it; part of hurting someone was your own magical field, the Lifestream chunk inside of you, combating the other person's Lifestream. Your soul, effectively, battling their soul- you couldn't do much harm to someone unless you overcame their inner soul first.

Melee weapons channeled that energy efficiently, but bullets didn't... guns were easy to use and cheap, but as soon as something left your hands, it no longer had a connection. Still hurt, still did damage, but it was purely mechanical force, didn't weaken their spirit in any way. There were ways around it- Vincent had done enough research on that in his long years to come up with a few- but none available to slum dwellers.

...This was gonna come down to her, and maybe Cloud, though she'd hoped he would stay back.

The thing moved its wing, as it realized that the bullets weren't truly dangerous, and with an indrawn breath the dog head spat out something like a wad of lava at one of its assailants. The blazing shot missed, aimed too low, smacking into the rock face the shooter was standing on and leaving a burning patch on the rock. The watchmen atop the rock squeaked in surprise, but to his credit, he kept shooting.

“ Okay, Cloud, Tifa! Get in there!” Wymer yelled. “ Everyone else, keep shooting- we'll kill it _eventually!_ ”

“ Let me take its focus,” Tifa said, repeating what she'd told Cloud when he'd first volunteered. “ You attack from behind, I'll keep it focused on me. I'm going to try to get rid of the whip-sword- that thing's moving quick.”

“ You got it!” he said, and the duo charged, Cloud going to the thing's left while Tifa ran straight at it. It saw her, the human head's eyes turning to see her and that was... _so_ freaky. She hadn't seen shit this strange since the war, and even then, nothing _quite_ like this. The dog head snuffed and spat more lava, this time directly at her; she dodged, the shot skipping harmlessly off the ground and plowing into a pile of rusted trucks, melting them. The human head screeched in frustration, and it raised the hand-paw conglomeration of its right arm, preparing to smash it down on her.

She dropped down into a quick roll, down to the dirt and up again, rising up before it as the thing slammed the massive meat of its tormented arm down. The dog head reached out to bite her; Tifa grabbed the middle part of the thing's nose with her right hand and pulled down sharply, the beast's whine high-pitched as the sensitive flesh of its inner nose was assaulted by Tifa. An old monster-hunter's trick, taught to Tifa by Zangan; a monster that could rip you in half, if you got a grip on it somewhere sensitive, would hesitate. It was like the ring in a boar's nose, it let you control the beast, and the theory held true now; her grip on the sensitive flesh let her guide the thing's head down.

It kept snapping at her, but a twist of its nose distracted it from trying to bite her, and the mutated arms couldn't reach her; the left was too short, the right too long. The whipping blade atop it tried to reach her, but it seemed to have trouble attacking her when she was literally in its face- the blade whipped around, but it cut behind her, stabbing at the ground a few feet behind her.

With her free hand, Tifa punched the human face on the neck in one of its oversized eyes. Both heads yelled as she slugged it once, twice, three times, too fast for the creature to react, and on her third blow the jelly of the eye popped and ran down its mutated cheek.

That hurt was enough for the monster to forget about protecting its vulnerable nose, it wanted her _off of it,_ now, and it shook hard, jerking back and forth violently and throwing her away from it. She landed on her feet, and looked up in time to see that Cloud was behind it; he ran forward as the grotesque mutant rubbed at its broken eye with the bulging mass of its right forearm, and while it was distracted, swept his great blade across the back of the left leg.

The blade parted the flesh like a hot knife through butter, though the metaphor wasn't perfect; butter did not bleed, after all, nor did it scream in piteous pain. The thing tried to lash out with a kick but, hamstrung, the leg didn't work right; it trembled as it fell, the left leg was the only leg it had left that worked right, and now it was as broken as the rest of it. It whimpered, trying to turn around, biting as it did so, crawling on its arms, the human face actually _sobbing_ and oh, Planet, Tifa was going to have nighmares about this fight later, she could just tell.

But the whip sword, it was not so slow, it was going right for him.

“ Cloud!” Tifa yelled, calling on her lightning and hurling it- but the thing didn't care, it noticed her lightning no more than it had noticed the thunderbolts of others, the crackle dissipating harmlessly. The sword kept lashing out in random patterns, and eventually one would get Cloud; he had blocked a few, but it was too fast and too random. Tifa started to run forward- she could tackle the whip at the base, maybe pull it out, and if Cloud could hold out for the few seconds it'd take her to get there, she could save him...

Something gleamed in the air.

A spurt of blood at the base of the head-tentacle, as something blitzed past it at high speed- something _sharp_ , that had sliced it off at the root. The thing kept yelling as the spasming shaft of muscle fell off of it, twitching like a decapitated snake, the head lashing out at random before the sharp edged feathers that made up the blade buried themselves in an ancient woodstove, unable to tug themselves free without a solid anchor on their other end; this left the long tentacle flailing in the air, scattering blood everywhere for a moment before it melted away into... petals?

But Tifa paid no attention to that. Tifa's eyes followed where the gleaming thing had went- there, stuck in the ground, quivering from force of impact. A four-pointed shuriken of huge size, in the Wutai style- what?...

Then the warped hound of heaven had mostly completed its turn, teeth close to Cloud, and Tifa put it out of mind.

He was ably defending himself as the thing tried to bite him in half, but it was twice his size and furious. He danced back, all elegant swordplay; he'd learned a thing or two in the war. His blade sliced the angel-poisoned animal's lips repeatedly, and he even got a lucky strike across its nose, but nothing fatal, and nothing that would stop it from trying to eat him. Gunfire still rained down, and more magic- especially the poison user, whose magic came accompanied with cackles that reminded Tifa of childhood tales of mountain witches- but it ignored them, focused on the man who had ruined its leg, even as the poison sickened and killed part of its smaller wing.

Tifa caught up to it, ran up its side, and landed atop the thing. Grabbing the bigger wing, she hurled herself in the opposite direction of its bend, and was rewarded with the horrible sound of bone snapping; the beast, distracted, turned its heads to her, yipping in pain, trying to reach her with its broken limbs.

( What a shattered thing. Even in the midst of her adrenaline rush, Tifa felt a bolt of sorrow in her heart for the poor dog this thing had once been, that had not deserved this, that _could_ not deserve this.)

As she stood atop it, hanging on, Cloud waved at her.

“ Tifa! Catch!” he yelled- and then he threw his sword to her.

She caught it with practiced ease, but looked at him like he'd lost his mind. “ What?” she said, even as her mind tested the weapon's heft and weight. A good, solid blade, this-

“ Neck!” he yelled, as he picked up a rock and threw it at the thing, managing to smack it in the wound he'd cut in the nose. “ When he turns- neck!”

...Oh.

The thing did indeed turn around, stretching its neck out as it tried to bite Cloud again, snorting in pain as Cloud threw another rock at the great gash he'd cut in its face. Right as it wrinkled its nose in pain and made preparations to lunge, Tifa ran down its back and leapt off, slicing down its neck as she did so.

The blade, backed by Tifa's great strength, sliced through bone and sinew, chewed through the thick meat of muscle, pierced all defenses... and eventually cut right through the great artery that supplied blood to the twin heads.

Blood _gushed_ from the monster. Just... _gallons_ of the stuff, the damn thing had more blood in it than a hundred hospitals, its mutated form trying to heal the loss of blood even as life flowed out of it. A veritable pool spread beneath the cut.

The blast of gore hit the nearest object, which was, naturally, Tifa, who had landed on her feet directly underneath the great wound she'd made. She was soaked before she could leap out of the way, wiping her eyes with her free hand as she slid to a stop near Cloud, looking less like a human and more like a person-shaped blood clot.

She sighed internally as she wiped her eyes, very deliberately keeping her mouth shut. She was _really_ going to have to wash her clothes now. And another shower. Or two. Maybe three.

But even as she wiped the dark red off of her face, the thing gave up the ghost. It trembled, but the body that barely worked when it was unharmed could not handle the massive trauma of Tifa's blow; it collapsed, and the body began to... fragment.

The greater form fell apart into a pile of angel feathers and flower petals, all white, all beginning to dissipate into raw mako even as they watched. In the middle of it all was just a dog, a big and friendly looking mastiff, breathing hard, breathing its last.

Cloud, weaponless, took a glance at the poor, wheezing, whimpering animal, whose muscles jerked and twitched as its nerves began to die, and he walked to it, striding across the dissolving feathers and petals.

“ Cloud!” Tifa warned him, still wiping her face off.

“ It's okay,” Cloud said. “ It's okay, Tifa.”

“ You don't know that,” Tifa said, but he ignored her.

He went up to it, and knelt. He put a gentle hand to its head.

“ Hey, it's okay now,” he said, and his arm glowed, cure flowing from the materia in his bracelet down his hand and into the creature- not much, not enough to heal it, but enough to ease its pain. “ It's okay.”

He stroked its head, and the dog, which had never been treated well all its days, pushed its head against the palm of his hand, wagged its tail once, and died.

There was a long moment of quiet, then, before Tifa went to him, holding out the bloodied sword horizontally.

“ Yours,” she said, awkward, as Cloud sat there, looking at the small corpse of the big monster. He arose and took his sword back.

“ Yeah,” he said. “ We'll need to burn the body... poor dog. It didn't... it didn't...”

He paused, put a hand to his face, and when he lowered it, a few delicate tears were running down his face.

“ This is why I wanted to know who might be behind it,” Cloud said, voice thick with sorrow and anger both. “ This... nothing _justifies_ this, Tifa.”

He wept, quietly, tears of frustration and sorrow both.

“ Is it dead?” someone from the watch asked.

“ Yes,” Tifa said, to spare Cloud having to answer. “ It's dead.”

“ We did it!” Wymer bellowed, and the cheer went up.

Cloud snorted, and rubbed at his eyes. “ I mean, it's good nobody's hurt,” he said, sighing. “ Just... this should never have happened...”

As the watch cheered all around them, Tifa felt the urge to hug him... but... no, she... she shouldn't.

_I have to be careful,_ she told herself, to ease the ache inside.

Instead, she looked for that odd weapon... but it was gone. The shuriken that had saved Cloud was gone.

Who had thrown it?

( Nearby, a small girl of Wutai descent sighed as she held her shuriken tight. _That_ had been a close one- but Cloud was alive, at least. Shame she'd lost her newest side job doing it, but hey, she still had her _real_ job.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note that the food served at the Canary's Last Meal is a real thing- it's called bunny chow, and it's a South African staple, being a fusion cuisine invented by Indian immigrants working in the fields.
> 
> It has a rather different history here; Corel is an area that has ALWAYS been big on mining, and so they invented most forms of sandwich and portable food entirely so they'd have something to eat down there. I chose it both because it was portable and easy to eat, and because the Corelians are themselves immigrants to Midgar, so it felt appropriate to use an immigrant-based food, albeit I mostly selected it because I really, really like bunny chow myself and think it's a shame more people don't know about it. 
> 
> I prefer mutton, but Corel cooking is heavy on beef; I used a mixture of Ethiopian and Indian influences to decide what their cooking was mostly like, with the exception of bunny chow. Ethiopian, because mountains and mining culture are similar, and Indian because I had to justify the existence of bunny chow somehow; the "sauce" Tifa is eating is effectively a form of curry. Since Hinduism isn't a factor on Gaia- which apparently only has the one religion, minus the cult I added this chapter- Corel has no problems eating beef, though frankly speaking they mostly use the cows for milk and a simply astounding variety of cheese; heavy beef eating is a relatively recent development, culturally speaking.
> 
> Because Corel was part of Midgar's faction in the war, Corelian food is extremely popular in Shinra territory, though the spicyness is considerably watered down for Midgar's relatively meeker palate. Masochist guys like to eat it with the spicy turned on full blast as a show of toughness, and in a weird side effect, poor people tend to eat it at its spiciest; the spices are cheap since most people don't eat them, so poor people use them in abundance, meaning the hottest dishes are in the slums. 
> 
> Corel food is considered one of the Three Great Cuisines of Gaia, alongside Midgar and Wutai; given that Shinra came up with the idea of Three Great Cuisines in the first place, it's not a surprise they chose the three groups most associated with them. For the curious, Wutai food is primarily Japanese in inspiration, but has acquired fusion culture traits since the great immigration to Midgar, primarily in terms of substituting different things for the seafood that was once the diet's basis.
> 
> Midgar's own foods are a bit of a mish-mosh, being mostly Scandinavian due to the name, but with heavy Japanese elements due to the Wutai influx.
> 
> The restaurant name is a reference to the practice of taking canaries into coal mines to check for poison gas.


	8. Luck's Lady

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now for fun times with AVALANCHE, former Turks all!
> 
> Also special guest appearances by very important people!

**Chapter Eight**

**Luck's Lady**

Three days after the Reactor bombing, Elena woke with a splitting headache.

This was not a surprise, given how much she'd been drinking, but just because pain was expected didn't mean it was a welcome guest.

With effort, she arose, moving a body that felt half-liquid on bones that weren't entirely sure they existed, and staggered to the refrigerator.

They actually _had_ one, and might be the only house in the slums that did. Elena had spotted it a year back on one of her trips to the dump for scavenging, something everyone here did from time to time. Elena didn't know why someone had tossed out a perfectly good mini-fridge, but had an idea of why _she'd_ been the one to find it; Shinra's science department had been fascinated by her. The very thing that made her an unsuitable SOLDIER made her a great Turk; she remembered hearing that blood and mako samples from her were taken directly to Lucrecia Valentine herself, though Elena never met that fabled immortal.

She groped for the fridge's tiny handle, broken when Elena had tripped while drunk a year ago and headbutted it into fragments, repaired with duct tape and a little bit of faith. It wasn't much of a fridge- barely a mini-fridge. Nothing like the big Shinra fridge Emma had bought her parents, with her very first Turk payday- spent every dime, so mom and dad and little Elena could have that big fancy fridge, and not have to rely on an icebox anymore.

( She hoped her sister was doing okay. She wondered if she'd ever married that guy she'd liked, if she'd had a kid, if Elena might be an auntie now to some little blonde baby of Emma's.)

As she stared into the empty fridge, her eyes refused to focus until she got mad at them, forcing her orbs- which were as hung-over as the rest of her- to work like they were required to. Reluctantly, they reported back the fridge's insides- Leed's canteen wasn't inside, since she'd be on patrol right now, a small block of cheese and some lunchmeats, keeping for longer inside the fridge. Sitting atop them was a little fancy plate... what?

Elena, cautiously, poked the tin foil open, moving carefully, as though she feared snakes would fly out of it to attack her.

...There was a whole dinner on this little plate. What?

Elena's brain, half-pickled, struggled to figure out where this manna from heaven had come from... wait.

Cloud! Yeah, he'd made her this, after the bombing mission. Heh. Good old Cloud. She smiled and tugged the dinner out. Hell yeah! She'd forgotten he'd done that.

This was just the ticket. Thank God for that blonde sweetheart. When this was over, she was gonna marry him, so she'd have a cook in the house.

When she shut the fridge door, she saw the note taped to the front that her bleary eyes had missed the first time. Her roommates had written on it, the top in Barretta's big, pretty handwriting- _Elena, please, drink some water, okay? We're worried about you._

Her i's were dotted with little smiles. Elena shook her head, and regretted it when her brain, already sailing on an ocean of crappy liquor, nearly capsized at the motion.

Beneath that lovely plea was Leed's thin, angry scrawl, as small and sharp as that neighborhood watchwoman. _Elena, you're worrying Barretta, shape the fuck up. Go shower, you stink like a dog's ass._

Huh. No threats to kick her out, which Elena wouldn't have been surprised by. She'd always been a terrible roommate; eco-terrorism was not conducive to obeying the unspoken laws of shared domiciles, and that was before you got into the weird mako swimming in Elena's veins. Her current roommates, this pair of Corelians, had lasted the longest, but Elena had no doubts that she'd eventually cross the line with them, too.

...Still, they were giving good advice for the moment. She grabbed a drink to go with dinner; not from her collection of dubious spirits, but water this time, filtered by the clever machines Cloud and Rufus had come up with that turned the foul water of the slums into something you could drink without risking disease and death.

( None of them would ever know it, but Rufus' filters, designed and built at Cloud's request, had saved more lives than anything else AVALANCHE had done up to that point; before them, cholera and dysentery had been constant threats in the slums.)

She ate the cold dinner, which was delicious, and made her feel more human, or at least, human-shaped. She ate it standing; she almost sat down, but given her state of disrepair, she really shouldn't dirty up anything else in the house. Instead, when she was done, she oozed her way towards the shower, where she set the water to blazing hot.

After a bath that very nearly steam-cleaned her, she felt clean enough to sit on the couch without sliming it up. She'd... she'd take today easy, give her liver time to fight the good fight and put some blood in her alcohol stream.

The noises of the slums during these busy daylight hours filtered in all around her; ugh... she'd turn the radio on first, before she sat down. Some white noise would help.

At least neither of her roommates would disturb her; Leed was on patrol with the neighborhood watch and wouldn't be back until dark, while Barretta was working as a secretary up on the Plate and wouldn't be home for a week. Things were so busy up top that the office had told its workers to sleep in their offices; Barretta had been back only once in the last three days, to shower, change, and grab some extra clothes and a pillow.

At least she was getting paid double normal wages... but then again, that just meant Shinra knew what it was doing, going all-out to look like the good guys in this situation. Assholes.

She wondered what they were saying now.

Might as well do some intel while she was detoxing. On went the radio, and every damn channel was about the Reactor bombing, even the stations usually devoted to music. Special reports, and all that.

She ended up stopping on a channel she almost never used- Golden Saucer Requests, which usually just played the big band, jazzy music so popular these days. Elena, whose tastes ran more towards Wutai roller, had never liked it much- but that wasn't what was playing now. The usually boisterous announcer was subdued, and his guest was a _very_ special guest, somebody _important_ \- the head of the Science Division.

Better yet, unlike the reports of most other channels- where crying survivors and ranting military men dominated- this one was fairly quiet and didn't make Elena's head ache.

She sat down, listening with half an ear, some part of her still a Turk even after all these years, listening more than even she thought she was.

**Okay, we're back from radio break. Once more, this is Golden Saucer Requests, doing a special report given the situation in Midgar. As always, I'm your host, Dyne, head of the Golden Saucer, and with me today is Dr. Lucrecia Valentine. We were just discussing the violence in Midgar, and as I teased before the commercial break, the good doctor has an announcement to make.**

_Yes, that's correct_ , an elegant, smooth voice said. It was almost hypnotic, full of an easy, unceasing rhythm, each word carefully separated from the next like sterile specimens in petri dishes. _In my position as Head of the Science Department at Shinra, and with the assistance of Midgar's mayor, I have decided to establish a series of shelters in Midgar that will begin accepting the most injured survivors of the bombing._

Elena began to drift off, listening to that lovely voice.

**That's good news to hear, Dr. Valentine. It's a shame you had to cut your family vacation short, though; we've loved having you at the Saucer.**

Gentle laughter. Elena could almost _see_ the poised, cultured woman who would make that kind of laugh, a delicate chuckling thing like the ringing of a musical triangle.

_You're too kind, Dyne. And please- you can call me Lucrecia. Your Saucer has been nothing but lovely, and we regret cutting our vacation short as well; but duty calls. My husband's Turks need to find the culprits, and I need to get the shelters running so that the injured can be cured._

**There aren't words enough in any language spoken under Shinra to thank you and your family for all you do. Even your work restoring the Red Lions has paid off; I've heard numerous reports of Red Lions digging people out of the rubble, reuniting people with their families and finding the lost.**

_I'm proud of their efforts as well; that's one reason I devoted so much money to reviving their species. The results you speak of are the fruits of Red XIII's Search and Rescue Initiative, and I am proud of my fellow department Head and good friend._

**Tell him to come on by! I've never seen him at the Saucer, we'd love to have him. I'm sure I could rob him blind on the racetrack; I've heard he's got terrible luck.**

_Red has sworn off gambling, I'm afraid,_ and then that tinkling laugh again.

**Before we move on to other matters, I believe you said your shelters would take only the most grievously injured? Can I ask why, out of curiosity?**

_Specific centers for the most badly wounded will free up normal hospital beds and already-existing care facilities, which can treat the vast majority of cases, but might get bogged down with the more serious injuries. By specializing only in the most extreme forms of damage, the shelters can process them faster and give them the appropriate treatments with greater speed, professionalism, and recovery odds than a regular hospital. Those who have lost limbs, suffered massive internal trauma, or have grave PTSD will be directed to my new installations, to receive direct assistance from staff prepared to deal with their injuries._

She sounded so nice. Elena vaguely recalled what she looked like on the posters, back during the war; all cool and wise in her labcoat, enormous ponytail held back by that yellow ribbon. She'd changed it after her daughter's death, it was pink now...

**PTSD? What's that?**

_Ah,my apologies. I spend a lot of time in my lab these days- my husband's always trying to get me out more. It means I use a lot of technical terms, which I apologize for._

She chuckled again, and the interviewer laughed too.

**Hey, you're still the most personable scientist I've ever met, no complaints here!**

_Thank you, Dyne. But to answer your question, PTSD, standing for post-traumatic stress disorder, is the scientific term for what the layperson refers to as rocket-shock._

**I'm sure my listeners know affected a lot of people after the war. But this isn't a war, Lucrecia... is it?**

_Isn't it? We've been bombed in our very home._

**A fair point.**

_War is inevitable, I'm afraid. War is a natural state of the unfortunate human condition, and I fear we are entering the first phases of the next one. Our research into PTSD- rocket-shock- shows promise for a cure. We've been doing a lot of research on the human mind over the last five years, and as tragic as these events are, at least that research can now be put to good use._

**That's good to hear. Rocket-shock affected a lot of good soldiers, especially in North Corel; we got the worst of the traitor's bombardment during the war.**

_North Corel suffered for its loyalty, and all Shinra thanks you for your services in that time of need._

**On behalf of my country, I accept your gratitude.**

_It was actually research into a way to help those unfortunates that prompted the development of this branch of our science. Of course, the research isn't just into PTSD. It's into all kinds of things- how people think, how decisions are made, what can be done to alter those decisions. All the inner workings of the brain. In many ways, the most fascinating frontier isn't outer space, it's_ _ inner. _

Another delicate laugh.

_Of course, I'm fond of outer space as well. Interesting things out there._

Elena drifted out, still listening to those sweet tones, slipping into dreamless sleep.

When she awoke a few hours later, finally sober, the scientific siren was no longer speaking, but the same radio announcer was there.

**Once more, we thank the good doctor for her special appearance. Up next is a Red Lion guest, Indigo XV, who's here to talk about Red Lion contributions to the relief efforts, which we already discussed a little bit with the good doctor, and after that, we'll speak over PHS with Mayor Gorkii of Costa del Sol, who has already sent relief vessels to the port city of Kalm carrying supplies for the wounded city, and his plans to open a charity for donations from Wutai citizens for Midgar.**

Elena had no more than arisen from the couch when there was a knock at her door. She went to open it- grabbing her gun first, just in case.

But the peephole revealed only Reno, whose face was terribly serious. She opened the door, pocketing her gun and blinking against the bright noon-day light.

“ Hey,” he said, tone light and at odds with his tense stance and angry look. “ I... I've got an idea. For a mission. Wanna come along?”

“ Of course,” Elena said. “ If you give me a bit more time to recover; afraid I'm not quite done drying out. Still, I'm surprised Rufus is sending us out so soon.”

Reno frowned, and Elena had a sinking feeling in her guts.

“ Well... Rufus doesn't... know about this mission?”

Oh hell.

-

That night, Elena found herself on a bike behind Rude.

“ Remember,” Reno said with a devil-may-care smile, the red in his hair and tattoos shining in the electric lights, “ we get to the information center, we raid it, we find what we need! I'll get proof those bastards did this themselves if it kills me!”

“ It's not you getting killed that worries me,” Elena shouted back to him. “ I'm concerned about Rude and myself! Also Tifa!”

“ Elena,” Reno said with a laugh, “ You'll outlive us all. You got the lucky mako, right? You'll be fine!”

“ Can we get started?” Tifa said from in front of Reno, cutting through the antics.

“ You heard the lady!” Reno said, pulling out his baton and pointing it like a sword, posed like a hero in a movie. “ Let's go!”

And off they went, Rude and Tifa driving, Reno whooping and laughing as they went, Elena just clinging silently on with her pistol in her hand, ready if trouble showed up. Fast they went, then faster still on their stolen Shinra bikes, down the long highway that wound up towards the Plate.

Their goal was to hack a communications and information collection center Reno swore would prove his innocence, would prove that his bomb had not killed all those people.

( Elena hoped he was right. Reno didn't deal with guilt well, and the fear that his bomb had killed all those people... well. Five years of fighting for the Planet had given a morality to all of them they'd lacked as Turks; there had been a Reno, once, who would not have cared to murder an entire Plate full of civilians, but Rufus' quest for redemption had dragged his faithful ones with him. Sometimes, it was hard for Elena to believe she had _been_ that icy, uncaring thing.)

They raced towards their destination, and Elena found her eyes kept glancing over at Tifa. She still couldn't believe it- but she also didn't believe Rufus' theories, either, which he'd shared with them at the debriefing. Elena had been _obsessed_ with Tifa as a kid, and that part had apparently never left her; that young part, still there despite everything, wanted to _squeal_.

She was going on a mission with _Tifa!_ It felt different than the bombing mission- she hadn't trusted that the woman really _was_ Tifa on that first outing, but seeing her tear through that guard scorpion robot thing... well. Shit, that was the work of a legendary heroine, alright!

She couldn't believe it, and let herself indulge in that youthful part, just for a few minutes, a dumb grin spreading across her face. _Tifa!_ The woman who had inspired her to sign up for the SOLDIER program in the first place! Man, she had been... she had been the _president_ of Tifa's fan club. Literally- she'd been the Sector 4 president, a title she'd proudly carried. And in the eternal war over who was better, Tifa or Aerith, she had been a frontline soldier, all for the country girl. She'd bought all the merchandise, saved up her allowance to buy posters and plaster her bedroom with them- she still remembered her favorite.

It had been a joint commission, from Shinra's SOLDIER division and the Wutai Foreign Regiment; a poster of Tifa, sitting happy on a tank's turret, surrounded by cheering Wutai soldiers. The Four Mighty Gods had been right beside her, the greatest warriors of that once-distant land, and Tifa's smile had been genuine as she flashed a thumbs-up alongside them.

...But this woman didn't smile as much. Even as Elena looked her over, she was all grim-faced seriousness... along with killer muscles, her fine biceps flexing as she revved her motorcyle, looking good in that ramshackle SOLDIER armor, which had clearly been scrubbed clean recently.

_Focus,_ Elena warned herself... but her eyes still drifted. Her devotion had been half admiration and half celebrity crush, and half starry-eyed hope; she'd identified with Tifa, very strongly. The country girl from nowhere, the bumpkin, who nonetheless earned the right to stand beside the mighty.

Elena had wanted her, and wanted to _be_ her, all at once.

The world flickered past. The highway security system was being upgraded, but supposedly Reno's passes would get them through... hopefully. If not... well, that's what they had the gun and the SOLDIER for. Emergency services were still tied up in the Reactor aftermath, as were most security divisions, so hopefully anyone that _did_ notice them wouldn't be trouble they couldn't handle... if they were quick, and got them before they radioed it in.

Elean glanced at Tifa again. She was solid as stone, both in body and demeanor; her face betrayed nothing but a trace of irritation at some ridiculous thing Reno was saying.

She was nothing like the cheerful woman Elena had listened to on the radio back in the day- she'd been a special guest on some talk show or another, and her mother had laughed when Elena had monopolized the radio away from her father's baseball game, to his vain protests.

Elena had ignored him, too busy devouring the sound of Tifa's voice, warm and friendly and just the smallest hint exotic, her tongue still just a little foreign for all her years of faithful service... but even that was telling, wasn't it? Tifa, despite being Western, had become a great hero of the East... and to Elena, who had the coolest person in the world as a big sister and thus felt inadequate most of the time, it was a heartwarming story, the promise that she, too, could become great in Shinra's new world.

( She hadn't known the price at the time, did not know what it cost to give her family the sedate life they lived; all she'd known was that Shinra was right and everyone else was wrong. Of all the brainwashing Shinra did, the Plate citizens were most affected.)

Elena wondered what had happened. Officially, Tifa had died in a last cowardly strike by the Western Alliance, right after the war ended, a strike that killed everyone in Nibelheim in burning flame... they'd executed the culprit, some Genesis something-or-another, a traitor SOLDIER like Zack had been, but... well, obviously that hadn't happened.

So what _had_? Why disappear for so long?

Her musings were interrupted when they hit a security checkpoint, and the holograms turned an angry red.

“ I thought the passes worked!” Elena shouted, as sirens began to wail.

“ Me too!” Reno yelled back.

“ I should have asked for money,” Tifa grumbled as she revved her engine, and Shinra guards on motorcycles roared down from guard posts to get them.

-

Elena checked her gun- clip was half-full, which agreed with her mental calculations, but you always wanted to check. Behind her, and past the giant metal crate she was using for cover, there was an enormous squad of Shinra soldiers, guns ready, led by a SOLDIER 2nd Class who stood tall under the spotlights with a Red Lion at his side, lab tattoo shining on red fur. Even if they'd had Rufus too, Elena did not fancy their chances against a group that big.

A shame; the mission had been going so well.

Tifa had handily dealt with the Shinra goons on the highway by the efficient method of driving up alongside them and punching them out. Given that Tifa's hands could destroy steel, human flesh and bone did not provide much resistance, and the highways were soon littered with dead or unconscious Shinra guards and their abandoned motorcycles. Rude had chucked mines to help out, and Elena had laid in with gunfire, though between Rude's defensive driving and the Shinra guards trying to dodge their fallen comrades, she didn't think she'd hit anybody.

Then they'd gotten to the information center, which had been full of guards up until the exact second Tifa decided it wasn't, and things had gone well! More fighting but nothing serious. They'd torn through the resistance and Reno had hacked the computers, and wonder of wonders, he'd found what he was looking for. Shinra had put bombs in the reactor; he had shipping manifestos and irregularities that revealed it. It _hadn't_ been Reno's bomb that did the damage.

Just as that relief was washing over them, this army had shown up, and was now politely waiting to kill them.

As Elena reloaded, she looked out at the courtyard again. The Shinra guys were showing some real discipline- not to Turk standards, but for goons, it was good. That SOLDIER with them though... he was a tall, thin man of Midgardian descent, and he had the calm demeanor of a person who had already won the fight to come. The Red Lion with him looked amused at the possiblity of resistance, materia gleaming in the complicated jewelry woven into its mane.

Getting back _out_ was going to be infinitely more fun than getting _in_ was. A shame she couldn't trigger her luck bullshit consciously, now would have been a _great_ time for a dose of unwarranted good fortune.

“ Anybody got any ideas?” Reno asked, peering around the forklift he was using for cover. Bullets weren't as bad as blades but the sheer weight of lead that would be flying at them if they were in the open would have proven fatal, lifestream or not.

“ No,” Rude admitted. “ But you have the info, Reno. If we split up, we can distract them while you escape...”

“ Rufus would never forgive me,” he said... trailing off whatever was meant to come next as Tifa held up a hand.

“ I have an idea,” she said. “ I'm going to challenge Luxiere.”

“ Who?”

“ The SOLDIER. He'll let me get at least close enough to talk before he tells them to open fire; I know him. I taught him martial arts.”

“ Wait, you taught him?” Reno said. “ Don't you watch movies? Your evil student is back and he's going to kick your ass, and more importantly, get us three killed when you die.”

Tifa smirked. “ I didn't teach him everything,” she said. “ He's practical, but he also thinks I'm dead, so he'll let me chat with him before he orders them to start shooting. Once I've got him talking, make a run for the gate, throwing anything you've got at them. Elena, shoot out the lights, that'll give you time. I'll keep him and the Red Lion distracted, and once they're done, I'll meet back up with you at the bikes.”

“ Okay,” Reno said. “ Not a great plan, but we might be able to cut down enough of them in a counter-ambush for it to work.”

Elena nodded as Rude and Reno shut their eyes; standard low-light tactic. Give your eyes time to adjust to darkness before you inflict darkness on the battlefield, or you'll be as blind as your enemies.

Of course, someone had to keep their eyes open, and since Elena would be looking at the lights while shooting at them, she kept hers open.

Tifa nodded, then raised her voice.

“ **Hey! Luxiere! How's it going?** ”

The SOLDIER's calm demeanor shattered like glass.

“ I... Sensei?!?”

The goons with him looked at him, as did the Red Lion, who spoke up.

“ Sensei? I thought Lockheart was your Sensei.”

“ I was,” that same woman said, rising up and waving at her former protege as Elena watched. “ Trained him, Kunsel, Alis... a bunch of people.”

Elena watched as Tifa rose up, waving at him.

“ How are you doing?” Tifa said, something like a smile ghosting on her face as she switched to a more normal tone. “ Glad to see you again.”

“ Sensei... you... you're _dead_ ,” Luxiere said, his face not entirely sure what to do. He raised a hand to his men. “ What the hell- how are you standing here? You died!”

“ Shinra lied,” Tifa said, approaching him slowly. “ I'm alive, Lux. I see they never promoted you to 1st Class.”

“ They don't promote to 1st Class anymore,” he said numbly, half-mumbling it as he stared at her, mind clearly still trying to grasp what he was seeing. “ 1st Class was made a wartime-only promotion; you have to earn it. With you and Aerith dead, Zack's betrayal, and Angeal gone missing... well, 1st Class was damn near empty anyway.”

“ Ragnarok would still be there,” Tifa said. “ Though I haven't heard anybody say anything about them. What happened?”

“ No one knows,” Luxiere said. “ We got a message from Alis about being under attack by some scarlet beast... but we didn't hear anything else; company chalked it up to monsters...”

He cocked his head, shaking it as Tifa reached him.

“ Holy hell, it's really you. Sensei, where have you _been?_ ”

“ All over,” Tifa said. “ Lux, why are you here?”

“ Break-in was reported,” he said. “ This data center had its security clearance raised this week, not sure why... but we go where orders say. We _do_ what orders say. Sensei... I'm supposed to wipe out _any_ non-Shinra elements here. Something's in this data center nobody should have.”

“ Yeah, the fact that Shinra bombed their own reactor,” Tifa said. The crowd of goons gasped, insulted her parentage, or otherwise reacted in shock. “ That's what we found.”

“ I...” Lux said, caught off guard. “ What?”

“ I was there, Lux,” Tifa said. “ I helped bomb that reactor. The bomb we used- it couldn't have done this much damage.”

More muttering among the guards. Reno raised a hand; a good time to make a run for it was coming up. They were confused, thrown off- staring at Tifa. All they needed was for her to do something distracting and then they could make a run for it...

“ Sensei... I'm not going to be able to let you go,” Luxiere said. “ But you're still my Sensei. Surrender yourself peacefully. I'm pretty important now, one of the last high-ranking SOLDIERs they have left; I have some pull. I can get you a lenient deal.”

“ Didn't you hear me?” Tifa asked him. “ Lux, Shinra killed all those people. The bomb we set only turned the Reactor off.”

Luxiere shook his head. “ Sensei, I was never like you; I never believed in Shinra's goodness. I believe in my paycheck and in my position. Morality doesn't feed a man.”

“ But without it you still starve,” Tifa growled, low in warning. “ I tried to instill better values in you than that.”

“ You might have been my teacher, but you weren't my mother,” Luxiere said, and his feet shifted into a fighting stance. “ I figured life out early. Surrender, or we fight.”

“ Finally,” the Red Lion muttered, moving into a battle ready position. “ Let's get this show rolling, Lux!”

“ Hard target protocol, troops,” Luxiere ordered his troops. “ Cobalt XX, you support me. Last chance, Tifa!”

“ Same to you,” she said, with an air of sadness as the Shinra soldiers swapped gun clips, probably loading materia-loaded rounds and other nasty things.

But Luxiere did not start the fight; Tifa did, rocketing forward into the crowd of Shinra troopers. Caught off-guard and reloading, half a dozen fell to her initial charge; more followed quickly, Tifa in their midst beating them with those steel-crushing fists, the soldiers shouting and shooting, half of them hitting each other instead of their target. Lux cursed loudly as he and his Red Lion tried to leap in after her, yelling at his men to clear out, but Tifa was in too deep; their numbers were a buffer, giving her space from her former student.

“ Better time ain't gonna show!” Reno yelled. “ Elena, shoot out the lights! Go!”

“ We don't run all the way; we support Tifa,” Rude said, and Elena nodded.

“ Yeah!” she said, and raised up. Distracted, only one Shinra soldier saw her stand up, and even as he turned his gun on her, Elena put paid to him with a barrage of solid-cored rounds that shattered his face mask. Thank the Planet Rufus had made bullets for her, too; he'd even been teaching her how to make them herself, though she didn't understand it as well as he did.

Right after that, she aimed at the lights. Tricky shots at this distance with a pistol, and she wasn't Emma, but Elena was still a damn good shot; the heavier-than-normal rounds punched through the glass and left the area in blinding darkness. Shinra goons yelled as the lights were kicked off; it wasn't _that_ dark, since this was Midgar and artificial light was filtering in from other sources- but with the big lights off, eyes used to the spotlights were rendered nearly blind.

“ Lights off!” she yelled, and Reno and Rude tore off as Elena followed more slowly, letting her eyes adjust. At least she'd been taught low-light fighting. The charge reached the confused, milling group, the sounds in the air all shouting and yelling and gunfire and people being pummeled by Tifa.

“ Howdy boys!” Reno yelled as they reached them, laying in with his electric baton. Rude was in there too, grabbing soldiers and beating them with other soldiers; one particularly unfortunate woman he grabbed by both legs and hammer tossed into an entire group of her fellows, a human bowling ball.

With Tifa in their midst, they weren't prepared for an attack from outside, and the massive crowd of troopers began to look much more manageable by the second. Elena, eyes finally adjusted, kicked and shot, though nothing spectacular happened; apparently she wasn't luck's lady at the moment.

Ah well. Turk training had taught her not to use it as a crutch; she fought on with just normal human skill.

A few seconds later, as the great horde continued to diminish, Elena found herself with front-row tickets to the confrontation of Tifa and Luxiere. The latter had finally managed to reach Tifa, and the troopers unconsciously cleared a space away from their commander. Elena just happened to be at the edge of that space, and as she put this clip's last bullet into a Shinra soldier's head, she took a gander at the combat spectacle happening next to her.

She was to the side of the two warriors, and this close, it was easy to see that he _had_ been trained by Tifa; they moved almost as one. Strike and counter and dodge and strike, half-guessing each other's attacks even as they made their own, moving at speeds no normal human could match.

It was... kind of pretty, in a way, and the part of Elena that had never stopped thinking Tifa was the coolest person on the Planet felt a bit awed to see such a display of martial skill.

But behind Tifa, unnoticed... the Red Lion, stalking through the crowd, teeth bared in a predator's grin. He was getting ready to pounce.

Elena pointed her gun at him, and the trigger clicked empty on a dry clip.

Shit!

With nothing else for it, she threw her gun at the Lion. She debated yelling to Tifa, but distraction might prove fatal; no, Elena had to deal with this thing by herself.

The gun smacked the Red Lion, who turned its head in disbelief and irritation.

Elena, not sure what to do but also not wanting to lose its attention, flipped it off with both hands.

“ Fuck you, housecat!” she said, saying the most racist thing she could think of off the top of her head.

Eyes narrowed into angry slits, the Red Lion turned away from Tifa and towards her.

Oh. _Shit._

Elena turned to run, but the press of crowd behind her meant she wasn't getting anywhere; she tried to tackle her way in, but she'd never been a big woman, and there were too many people here. The Red Lion was running at her full pace, oh _shit_ -

Right as the Red Lion pounced, one Shinra soldier's gun just went off in his hands, even though his finger was nowhere near the trigger. The sudden spray struck two soldiers in front of him right in the kneecaps, and as the two women howled and fell, Elena- who was in the process of shoving on one- fell with them, being carried forward by their momentum.

The Red Lion's leap thus missed her neck; instead, his claws sank into her ass.

Elena yowled, half from pain, half from sheer _indignity_ , and her scrambling hands found the rifles of the two women who'd fallen.

“ Let go of me!” she yelled, twisting her body around, aiming awkwardly- but at this range, she couldn't possibly miss, shoved her guns into its face.

Before it had time to do much more than register them, she had held down the trigger, and blown him away.

Rude was at her side a moment later. Tifa had finished Luxiere, and that broke the morale of the remaining troopers; panicking in the dark, getting their asses kicked, and seeing the Red Lion reduced to paste in the flashes of Elena's gunfire, they broke and fled.

“ You okay?” Rude asked as he reached down and popped the dead claws out of her backside.

“ I'm fine,” she grumbled. Reno reached her a moment later, as did Tifa, and Reno started snickering.

“ Did you get stabbed in the ass?” he asked cheerfully.

-

There was no way to comfortably put ice on your ass, Elena had discovered.

The closest thing to it was to lay down and let the ice sit on your butt like the world's least comfortable bustle; Elena did just that in her apartment. Leed, who'd finally gotten back, hadn't even complained when Elena grabbed a bottle to drink... though she _had_ laughed at the sight of her rommate plopped down face-first on the couch.

Damn Reno. Stupid bullshit night-time mission. He'd had them parachute down, since the motorcycles had been stolen by the Shinra guys when they ran- which was kinda funny, they'd stolen the bikes in the first place, and now they'd been taken back. Reno had cracked a joke about repossession that even got Tifa smiling.

Tifa... some part of Elena squealed in delight. She'd went on a mission with Tifa! Two, in fact When she was younger, she'd fantasized about serving alongside the legendary Lockheart! She'd imagined a lot of scenarios, and tonight, she'd gotten to play one out; she'd saved her life.

( Tifa had thanked her, awkwardly, as they parachuted down; thanked her, and told her she was sorry about her ass, before both of them broke down laughing at the absurdity of it all. Tifa's laughter had been nice, a hearty, sweet echo of the warmer person that had been there, once.)

...None of those fantasies had involved getting stabbed in the ass.

But hey, that was how her luck went, right?

( And nearby, Reno went to Rufus with what he'd found, and Rufus prepared to send it to his man on the inside of Shinra.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a quick note:
> 
> Reno is the Jessie of this AVALANCHE; he flirts a lot but he doesn't mean any of it. Rude is the Biggs, except he's crushing on Tifa like CRAZY. 
> 
> Elena is the Wedge, thus, her butt is literally in the line of fire. A moment of silence for her noble buttocks.
> 
> Rufus is the Barret, obviously. Which will make the chapter after the next one MUCH funnier in hindsight.


	9. Ladybird, Ladybird, Fly Away Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tifa pays for her drinks, reminisces, and we get to learn which is the best alcohol on the Planet.

**Chapter 9**

**Ladybird, Ladybird, Fly Away Home**

Tifa studied the materia Reno had given her, his reward for her help with the mission. She held it aloft in the fingers of her right hand as she sat at Cloud's pub; that noteworthy himself was cleaning glasses and dishes, finishing up his work for the night.

Tifa wasn't paying much attention to him, other than the constant background awareness of her surroundings that years of war had left her with... instead, she just looked at the materia, as though it might reveal secrets to her if she just studied it long enough.

No such thing happened, of course. It was just a deep crimson color... red, the color of summoning materia, the rarest kind. Powerful, strange, different from anything else the Planet produced- and it was _only_ the Planet that made them, she remembered Lucrecia's complaining that no method of making them artificially had ever worked. Apparently the few they'd managed to make had... issues. A shame; the ability to simply call an ally out of the Lifestream was potent, and wars had been won in the past by judicious use of summoning materia.

It wasn't a surprise, given its rareness and power, that summoning materia had so many... connotations. Aerith had talked about them, after they'd successfully retrieved Shiva's summoning materia... damnation, Aeris had went _on and on_ about that.

( _Don't call her Aeris_ , she reminded herself.)

She'd been so happy, she'd talked Tifa's ear off about how much it meant to her. Shiva'd been some great hero of the Ancients, memorialized eternally by the Planet for her great deeds... a lot of stuff Aerith had said. Apparently Shiva had even been worshipped by some cultures... and she wasn't the only summoned beast so worshipped. According to Aerith, who'd done the research, many cultures had decided the things summoned from Materia were holy, in some way... or, conversely, had their religions “proven” by finding a Summoning Materia that contained their Gods.

Lucrecia had gently mocked the idea at one of the dinners Tifa had attended with the Valentines- some Shinra function or another, they honestly all blended together after a certain point. Lucrecia had pointed out that different summoners produced slightly different summoned entitites; the person's own views colored what came out, and she'd described her theory that the summoned materia was just a bigger version of that same concept.

She'd stated the Lifestream simply reacted to ideas in the popular consciousness. When people believed in something hard enough, a materia crystallized around that faith, making their God a summoned beast. Thus the religion was “proven” by its own byproduct. Faith generating divinity, in Lucrecia's own words, the doctor amused by the process, and by the fact it tricked so many people over the years.

( And yet... there hadn't been any condescension there. She'd sounded almost _fond_ of humanity's stupidities, the way one was fond of a dog that had some irritating habit... but that had somehow bothered Tifa more than a thousand arrogances would have. Vincent she'd admired for his cool professionalism, and Aerith had been her friend, but Lucrecia had always felt... off to her.)

Later, Aeris had told Tifa her mother was wrong, a sentence she never said aloud in Lucrecia's presence, and always seemed nervous to say at all. She had it backwards, Aeris said; the summoned beasts were more like a record of great events in the Planet's history, and they had a sort of... gravity to them, a weight in the Lifestream. Human minds responded to that signal, and religions were made about the way that signal made them feel, and the “gods” of that religion found later...

Aeris- _Aerith_ had liked discussing religion. It had been one of her hobbies; she collected books on ancient religions like other people collected posters. And Tifa, as her first (and for a long time, only) friend, got subjected to a lot of Aerith's thoughts on those books. She was an atheist, of course- like Tifa was- but she'd loved the _idea_ of religion, particularly those based on the Ancients. She'd even joked about starting a new religion, focused on good works...

She'd have approved of the Descendants, Tifa figured, though she didn't know how she'd have reacted to the blank white eyes... but then again, of all people in the world, SOLDIER types had no right to talk of other's strange eyes.

...Thinking of Aerith- which inevitably made Tifa think of how that friendship, forged in war, had ended- was depressing, so Tifa refocused herself on the present... and on the materia in her hands.

Reno said he'd stolen it from Shinra a long time ago, and that it was all he had to pay her with. It was fire, hot, burned... Ifrit. She'd seen him a few times on the battlefield, though she'd never used summoning materia herself; Shinra'd had this particular materia for a long time. Angeal had used it, Zack's mentor, one of the first SOLDIERs... Tifa had gotten to know him pretty well, before he disappeared and Zack went rogue...

...Dammit, couldn't she think of _anything_ without going back to the past? She snorted in anger... and felt the bar heat up, as the lifestream inside her responded unconsciously to her anger, tapped into the fire in her hands. An anger, wildfire, uncontrollable, explosive...

Visions of Nibelheim burning, dancing thorugh her mind.

( _the fire and the ice and the mistake_ )

No, no, _no._ She couldn't use this materia. She _wouldn't._

“ Cloud,” she said, and as he turned around, she flicked the red materia to him. “ Catch.”

Cloud caught it, giving her an odd look as he did so. “ I- what?”

“ Yours,” she said, and offered no further explanation than that. “ I don't want it.”

Mentally, she kicked herself. _Should have said need!_

“ I... how come?” Cloud asked, apparently not noticing her slip of the tongue as he held the delicate-seeming, practically indestructible orb.

“ Try it out,” Tifa said, instead of answering his question. What was she going to say? _I remember your mom burning to death, and it means I don't like fire?_ She'd never liked fire anyway, preferred electricity as far back as she could remember. Aerith had ice, Nanaki had fire, she had electricity, the default trio of attack magic, the most common weapons for spellcraft.

Cloud shrugged, and holding the materia in his hands, let some of his magic flow into it. As his inner soul linked up with the materia's magic, the aura of the room changed, no longer a wildfire, but something... comforting?

Tifa's mind, unbidden, though of campfires she'd warmed herself beside, the easy times and simple camaraderie that came from sharing a fire with someone. With the Wutai Foreign Regiment, she'd done it often, the foreign-born warriors of Midgar used to rough living and Tifa, a former country girl, finding herself easily able to adapt to their ways, much to their admiration. Those had been... those had been good days, fighting alongside the Four Mighty Gods, though she'd missed Aerith terribly... she'd had to go home, something her mother was working on had demanded Aerith's personal attention.

She wondered what Cloud was thinking, what this change made him think of.

( Cloud thought of the warmth in his heart that came from looking in Zack's eyes, and the feeling of satisfaction inside his chest when the smell of good cooking filled his little pub, warming others with the work of his own hands.)

“ Keep it,” Tifa said. “ I'm not fond of fire.”

“ As you wish,” Cloud said, giving her another glance, but slotting Ifrit's materia in his bracer nonetheless, the red a warning next to the cooler green of his spells. Tifa idly wondered what Ifrit summoned from her hands would look like, compared to how he'd be in Cloud's...

Bah. She didn't intend to ever find out. She felt morose and... nervous? Something the fire and all associated memories had stirred up inside herself.

( _the fire and the ice and the mistake_ )

...Maybe some liquid memory eraser would help.

“ Cloud... can I get a drink?” she asked. “ I know you're closing up, but I don't mind paying you for a bottle so you don't have to wash another glass.”

“ Wymer didn't pay you _that_ well for your help,” Cloud said, chuckling, even as he moved to grab a glass. “ Besides, I wasn't done washing dishes anyway, and hey! You're an old friend. You also just gave me a summoning materia, consider it paid for. What would you like to have?”

Cloud didn't make enough gil to do that- hadn't he told her that he made gil off number of customers alone?- but Tifa's reticience and awkwardness combined with her desire not to spend her vanishingly small wallet to keep her from insisting on paying.

“ I... do you have any sake?” Another remnant of her time with the Regiment; it had left her with a taste for the foreign liquor, which was equal parts smooth and strong.

( She'd been drinking with Zack one night, and he'd described it as “the nicest brick wrapped in silk that's ever hit me”, and they'd both laughed- and she'd remembered that laugh when she broke his neck.)

“ Rufus didn't entirely destroy this bottle of sake,” Cloud said, as he pulled out a quarter-full bottle, made of delicate blue glass, painted with a religious devotion to Leviathan in white, and covered in Wutai's writings.

“ Oh,” Tifa said, as her eyes read the Wutai script, and those mako-charged slits grew wide. That was... “ Oh! How could you _possibly_ afford this?”

Cloud grinned at her. “ You recognize it?”

Kisaragi Sake, colloquially called flawless wine- the rarest and most expensive drink in the world, surpassing even Kalm River Bourbon and Corel's famed Stone Wine. A single rice farm, located out near the Zolom Marshes, grew the specific variety of rice that went into this drink; something saved from Wutai's destruction, and the last thing associated with the Kisaragi name that hadn't been tainted by Godo's actions. Somehow, someone had saved the seeds, even though so much else was gone with Wutai in the blastwave of the first Mako Reactor's meltdown... but not this rice, and not this drink.

Holy _shit._ Bottles of it were so expensive that even President Shinra had sparingly used it; Tifa had armwrestled Staniv for the right to a single cup, once!

( Damnation, if it hadn't been worth it, too!)

“ Cloud, do you have any _idea_ how expensive... you gave that to Rufus?!?”

Cloud shrugged, and winked at her. “ Drinks are meant to be _drunk_ , Tifa. No matter how rare and precious... though I'm curious. I won this in a card game.”

Tifa shook her head. “ Then... I'm _not_ going to tell you what it's worth. I'll spare you the knowledge.”

He could have sold that bottle and moved up to the _Plate..._ who in the world was wagering flawless wine in a _card game?_

...Who the hell did Cloud play cards with?!?

With these questions swirling in her mind, Cloud prepared her a cup, in the classic Wutai style- he even had it right, flawless wine was meant to be served chilled, unlike most types of sake. He even had the right cups, and handed her one to hold as he poured.

“ I didn't know you knew Wutai etiquette so well,” Tifa said, impressed, and still flummoxed enough that Cloud had a bottle of _Kisaragi Sake_ that her normal wariness was temporarily muted.

“ Did a lot of dishwashing in Wutai restaurants in Wall Market!” Cloud said cheerfully as he finished filling her cup. “ But dishwashing moved up to service, and once I got a handle on speaking the language and reading it, they let me do more up-front... and honestly, I kind of like the ceremony of it all. It's... respectful.”

Cloud, praising respect.

_I've fallen into an alternate universe_ , Tifa thought. She'd read a science fiction novel like that- gift from Aerith. Her mother was always sending her sci-fi to read, but she kept fobbing them off on Tifa instead, who enjoyed them in the rare moments of peace they'd experienced on campaign.

Tifa took a sip, and the fabled silk-wrapped brick beaned her in the brain and the tongue both.

_I'm okay with this one,_ Tifa thought. _This universe has sake in it, it can't be all bad._

Cloud gave her a grin. “ Good?”

Tifa exhaled slowly, just letting the taste linger on her tongue.

“ Perfect.”

Cloud grinned as he turned back to his dishwashing, as Tifa enjoyed her drink. Only one thing was bugging him.

All throughout the war, he'd kept up with reports on Tifa, out of anger at first, then later, as he began to change, because he was worried for her.

And hadn't they claimed she loved fire magic?

Maybe'd he'd just heard them wrong. Or it was propaganda.

( But inside... the way she'd looked at this materia... like she was... scared of it?)


	10. Stopping the Train

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Barret Wallace, Head of Urban Development! Surely he is up to nothing a good Shinra executive wouldn't do... right?
> 
> Also introducing the Turks, Blast and Vicks! Who you may know better under other names...

**Chapter 10**

**Stopping the Train**

Barret Wallace rubbed his tired eyes with his right hand, and reached for a pencil with his left.

What a day.

His pencil's scratching was the only sound in his office. It was a small, spartan thing; Barret had never held much with useless decoration, an ironic philosophical position for a man who had himself become, effectively, useless decoration. His desk, which had his network-linked computer and all of his files, dominated the room, alongside the comfy swivel chair he sat in and three chairs for guests- all Shinra standard, the only distinctive thing being a hand-painted doodle of a canary on the back of the mainframe.

The walls were plain wood and bare; the only things on them were a painting of Corel as it had been before the Reactor was built, and above the doorway, where Barret had to see it every time he looked up from the desk, the agreement he'd signed as mayor of Corel that brought Shinra and its Reactors to his people, framed in glass.

President Shinra had rather liked that, had admitted he thought it was a neat touch, to remind oneself of where it all began.

Barret agreed with him.

( It was important to remember your original sin.)

His office was extraordinarily small, the size of Palmer's, though it felt bigger since it wasn't as cluttered. It fit with his importance to Shinra; the Department Head of Urban Development was a lot like being a canary in a coal mine, if Barret would allow himself the most stereotypical possible analogy for a Corelian to make. He was there primarily to make noises of distress and disaster that, in a system that worked for the people, would be listened to. Lives would be saved because he was present- it was one reason Corelians drew little canaries on things, ancient symbol of the little martyrs who saved so many lives, over the long centuries of their mining. Tiny blessings of hope and safety.

But Shinra, while many things, was _not_ a system that worked for the people as a whole. It worked only for a select few... and they didn't care to listen to Barret's chirping. He doubted anyone had read his reports in five years.

It wasn't like he had any power to _make_ them listen. Both in practical terms and in literal, legal terms, Shinra had written the powers of his office in such a way as to leave him with little ability to actually _do_ anything.

Take the current crisis, for example. You'd think that after so much damage was done to one of the Sectors, Barret would have been heavily involved. Urban Development, right? This sounded like a job for him.

But he had no power to help. Emergency services was not under his control, but under _Heidegger's_ , since emergency civil services in Midgar was technically an outgrowth of the military- and thus, Public Safety.

( What a misnamed branch of Shinra; Barret had preferred its name during the war with the Western Alliance, the Department of Combat Operations... but they'd tried to hide what they did after the war. More propaganda, Shinra's favorite weapon against the masses.)

He didn't even have the power to order the hospitals around. Every hospital in Midgar that was owned by Shinra- all of them, in other words- were military hospitals first and foremost. There had been civilian hospitals, before Shinra, in the eight small townships that had been combined to make the world's new capital city, but all were bought out or... encouraged to close down.

The same thing had happened to Corel, after Barret had invited the vampire inside. They'd needed an invitation, back in the day, still so weak from the Wutai disaster; but he had opened the door for them, to his eternal shame.

( He had just wanted to see a future in which Corel's children did not have lungs full of coal dust. Such a small dream, such a good intention, with which to pave such a long road to Hell.)

By his hand had the beast been given time to feed, to grow... to grow to the point it needed no invitation, not any more. The War had seen to that. The world had risen up in resistance... and failed. All the gathered might of Gaia could not stop the bloated parasite that now reigned, that was sucking the Planet dry and didn't even have the decency to do so in a metaphorical kind of way; no, Shinra went straight for the world's jugular, burned souls to make electricity, a cost to benefit ratio so horrifically skewed that it beggared belief.

_And it's all my fault,_ Barret thought.

He sighed as he finished the first round of paperwork. Heidegger hadn't wanted to deal with the colossal paperwork that the Reactor bombing had caused; Barret had offered to take the work off his hands, and get it ready for him. Heidegger had been delighted to fob his job off on Barret; he had “better business” to attend to, in his own words. Barret had taken the opportunity to tweak some of the papers; it wouldn't amount to much, but it was more aid than Heidegger would have given on his own, gave a little extra money to the hospitals and a little less money to the security forces. Heidegger wouldn't be the first general to appropriate emergency funds under the guise of “increasing security.”

With that done, Barret turned to his _real_ work.

He pressed the talk button on his intercom.

“ Make sure I'm not bothered for the next hour,” Barret said to his secretary.

“ Of course, sir,” came the zealous reply from his secretary. Barret paid his people half again more than the other Department Heads; the other Heads thought it was because he didn't understand business very well, but in truth, he did it because he understood _people_ very well. The high pay rendered them fiercely loyal, since everyone wanted to work for the generous Mr. Wallace, and they didn't want to get fired. His orders were treated like law; if Mr. Wallace said he wasn't to be bothered for an hour, nobody short of another Department Head was getting in.

Not that he got many visitors, but he hadn't lasted this long at his work by being careless.

He opened a drawer in his desk. It contained a large bottle of stone wine, a few clean glasses in case he had visitors- he drank often with the Mayor of Midgar, who was in a similar position of being effectively a decoration in Shinra's operations- and the box that held his wedding ring, now just a memento of the past.

( He couldn't blame Myrna. He hadn't handled the truth of what he'd helped create well; when he had looked around, and saw what they'd done to the world, and knew it was his fault...)

But the divorcee wasn't looking at yesterday's regrets; no, today was about tomorrow. He reached for the secret button he'd installed, pressing it to connect the cables and wires that connected his computer to the in-house network Shinra employed... but not the cables and wires that had been installed by Shinra technicians. _That_ had taken some elbow grease; he'd had to tug off some of the wall paneling and hook them up personally, and that was after smuggling the equipment in with his briefcase.

But it worked, after a long year studying electrical engineering and computers both. Hard work, for a man that had never attended higher education before... but it wasn't like he hadn't had time.

His computer blinked on, and Barret input his password- well, not _his_. Palmer had revealed his password to Barret after a long night's drinking four years ago- it had been worth it to buy the old pervert a ticket to the Honeybee Inn. Barret doubted Palmer even remembered giving him his password.

Barret had his own password, but for the work he was doing now, every layer of misdirection was an additional piece of armor, one that might save his life.

Thus inside, Barret gave his computer time to ready itself. Even on a Shinra mainframe, one of the world's best, the sheer number of programs he'd put in the thing made it run slow at start-up. He poured himself a cup of stone wine while he waited, his computer slowly booting itself up, running the code he'd written that would hide it from other users, that would let it slip outside the boundaries defined by the network masters, that gave him access he should not have to things he wasn't supposed to see.

It was on his third sip that the booting-up process completed, and the entirety of Shinra's Headquarters was his to observe.

He activated the camera program, and his screen split into four. In the upper left, as he always did, he put one camera watching the hallway outside his office. No visitor had surprised Barret since he'd started doing this; and if he was caught, he'd be executed, and worse.

He cycled through cameras for the second one, eventually settling on Vincent Valentine's office, which was as spartan as his own, save for a _tremendous_ collection of guns on one wall, and a wall decorated with photos of his family, focusing on his dead daughter, Aerith. His long red overcoat hung on a coat rack nearby; he was in formal attire in his suit, his long hair almost shaggy in his unruliness. A single pink ribbon was wrapped around one arm- even five years later, he mourned his daughter.

He had his two favorite Turks with him... Jessie Rasberry and that Biggs guy, whose last name Barret could never remember.

Barret opened his top left drawer and withdrew a pair of headphones from it- that was his office supplies drawer, pens and papers and paperclips, so many paperclips. He plugged in and put one earbud to his ear as he activated audio on that camera, listening in.

“ Just to finish preliminary matters,” Vincent's calm, professional voice, sounding tinny and distant through the camera's microphone. “ I'd like to thank you once again for apprehending Don Corneo. That's one less worry on the list.”

“ No trouble, boss!” Jessie said, laughing. She'd always been the more bombastic of the pair, in Barret's experience, a personality as explosive as her bombs. “ I love going after freaks like him; hope the fellows in interrogation have fun!”

“ I just wish he hadn't had that big beast with him,” Biggs said, voice so dry it was hard to hear it as the complaint it was. “ He apparently has a real talent for raising monsters- it was fiercely loyal to him.”

“ Monsters recognize monsters,” Jessie said flippantly. “ Anyway, Boss, what's next? You usually don't interrupt our R&R for anything, so this is probably pretty big.”

Vincent favored his currently-best agents with a thin smile- quite a gift from the stoic man. “ You do know me well. I am afraid that some... impossible information has arisen. I need this taken care of, _very_ quietly.”

“ Then why'd you ask me along?” Jessie said, and even Vincent couldn't hold back a snort of amusement.

“ You are subtle when necessary,” Vincent said. “ In this case... I need a target retrieved alive. Alive is _vital_. Dead is of no use to me. Try to get the target to come willingly if you can.”

He held a folder out, which Jessie took, and when she opened it both her and her partner looked it over. The camera was behind them, but their heads blocked Barret's view of the paper...

“ So who's this?” Jessie said. “ Good-looking guy.”

“ Jessie,” Biggs said quietly in admonishment. “ Don't you do it.”

“ I'm just saying,” Jessie said. “ The overalls look kind of doofy, but the rest of it... I'm really rocking that hair. Can't be natural but the silver... don't know, it kinda does it for me.”

“ Jessie.”

“ I had to look at Don Corneo on our last mission,” Jessie replied. “ It might have damaged my heterosexuality. I need to rebuild it. I need to let it _heal_. And he looks like the medicine I'm craving.”

“ You are not allowed to have sex with the target,” Vincent said. “ I need him alive and _unharmed_... and in his case, seducing him will count as harm.”

“ Hey, I take some offense to that!” Jessie said. “ I'm not gonna tie him up or anything. Since when did a little bit of hanky-panky count as _harm_?”

“ Since him,” Vincent said. “ I.. have reason to suspect he is very important to my wife, and if you sleep with him... well, I don't want to have to explain that to her.”

“ You're the boss,” Jessie said, shrugging. Orders were orders. “ What equipment are we authorized to bring with us?”

“ Nothing but your personal items, extra medical kits and a helicopter for transport,” Vincent said. “ I'm serious about bringing him in alive. I don't care if it turns out he's secretly the leader of AVALANCHE; _alive_. And keep it secret; if he's not who I think he is, then I don't want to get my wife's hopes up. And if he is... well, husbands should always have a surprise for their wives when they get back from vacation.”

“ Weren't you supposed to be on that vacation?” Biggs asked. “ How'd you get back so quick?”

“ Perks of being the top Turk,” Vincent said. “ I flew back. My wife doesn't like air travel, so she's taking a boat. She finds the rocking motion soothing.”

“ When do you want him in?” Jessie asked.

“ Observe him for a week, then make your move,” Vincent said. “ Again- _capture him alive._ ”

His voice had shifted just then, something growling and wolflike in his lungs, emphasizing his point just the _tiniest_ bit. The two Turks saluted, proper as you please, not frightened so much as focused; for the boss to do _that_ , this mission was _important._

“ It'll be done, sir,” Jessie said.

“ Alive and unharmed,” Biggs confirmed.

“ Good,” Vincent said, voice back to normal. “ Blast, Vicks, you're dismissed.”

The codenamed duo left in good order, taking the folder with them, and leaving Barret stil blind as to who their target was.

_Silver hair and overalls... some old farmer?_ But given Jessie's inclinations... young, fit and muscular, she liked them slender and toned.

He'd send the information to Rufus, his man in the slums; something weird was going on here. How was Lucrecia involved in all of this?  
( Lucrecia, the one person in all of Shinra that Barret feared saw past his facade of being just a big, dumb foreigner, who didn't know too much, the best shield he had. Lucrecia, whom he'd caught _looking_ at him with those strange, dual-colored eyes... though why she had heterochromia now, he did not know. Old pictures of her he'd scrounged up showed that both of her eyes had been brown, years ago... so why was her right eye emerald green now?)

He kept his second camera on Vincent's office, just in case he could catch more about this strange mystery case. Vincent was doing paperwork, and Barret kept an eye on him as he cycled the third camera. Nothing of importance flickered by for a few minutes; Red XIII in his office taking a cat nap, the rows of tanks growing new Red Lions, some of Scarlet's lab techs working on some new materia, one of Scarlet's laboratories in the middle of a massive firefight as her latest attempt to make summoning materia backfired and materialized some warped goddamn thing from the ether, some deranged draconic beast that was being cut down by Shinra grunts of both the human and Red Lion varieties.

The most interesting thing he saw was a couple of Shinra guards on break in amorous embrace, the two men sharing soft kisses underneath a staircase, blissfully unaware of the camera nearby- and that was only interesting because Barret had thought those two were _never_ going to confess to each other, so good on them.

Finally, however, he struck gold. Heidegger's office, which had both Scarlet and, to Barret's surprise, the President in it. The President rarely met people outside of his own office; this was unusual. Perhaps he'd just been walking by, or simply wanted a change of scenery.

Heidegger's office was good scenery, too; vast, but still somehow claustrophobic, as it was cluttered with war trophies. A great dragon's head dominated the back of the room, one of Cosmo Canyon's tamed beasts Heidegger had personally killed, his great pride and joy, but it was surrounded by a variety of less impressive but equally telling trinkets: a casing from one of Rocket Town's weapons, a gold-plated fishing rod looted from some rich man's home in Mideel, a pair of axes from a Nibelheim resistance fighter with no name who had, nonetheless, come closer to killing Heidegger than anything but the dragon, a story he relished telling at every opportunity.

Barret ignored them, however, focusing on the people in the room. Perhaps Barret might learn about this _better business_ of Heidegger's. Earphones at the ready, Barret listened in.

“ I'm telling you, Scarlet, I want to pilot the damn thing,” Heidegger said.

“ Heidegger, are you sure that's wise? Your soldiering days are long behind you,” Shinra said.

Heidegger laughed his stupid horse laugh, a sound Barret had learned to _hate_ in his time at Shinra. “ Nonsense! For a true warrior, every day until the day you _die_ is a soldiering day! Besides, I'm growing fat behind this desk, and these are just terrorists. Between my skill and Scarlet's know-how, I'll be perfectly safe.”

“ I don't know,” Scarlet said, though her tone was far from worrying; she sounded amused, her default state of being. “ Remember what our dear, nearly departed SOLDIER said. He claims Tifa Lockheart was behind the break-in two days ago at one of our facilities.”

Shinra snorted in derision. “ The lunatic ramblings of a nearly dead man. Luxiere is a fine career man, and his loyalty to us is unquestionable, but he was also hurt very badly in the altercation. I sincerely doubt he's even aware of what he's saying.”

“ Which itself warrants caution,” Scarlet said. “ AVALANCHE was able to maul a 2nd Class SOLDIER. Are you _sure_ you wish to fight them, Heidegger?”

He laughed again. “ It only whets my appetite! A sword needs a whetstone, and a warrior needs good opponents! I cannot wait to test myself against them, if they are such worthy prey.”

“ Well, I can't say no to that, it's quite a worthy sentiment,” Scarlet said, and she laughed- well, that didn't do it justice. It was a _cackle,_ high-pitched horror for anyone with ears. Barret was grateful for the dimming effect of the camera's microphone. “ Do be careful, though. I won't have anyone fun to torment to if you get killed.”

“ Oh, you'd find somebody, you witch,” Heidegger said, and the duo laughed, a terrible dual assault on the ears.

Heidegger and Scarlet. Barret had never been able to figure out whether they hated each other, liked each other, or just liked hating each other. Water cooler conversations and his eavesdropping confirmed that no one else in the building knew, either, though everybody had a theory.

“ The important question,” their boss cut in, “ is not whether your machine and Heidegger's skill can kill them. I will do you both the honor of _assuming_ competence on your parts. The question is making sure those deaths have the right _impact_. Scarlet, how long until the machine is ready with the modifications Heidegger requested?”

“ Two weeks,” Scarlet said. “ One if we rush.”

“ Rush it,” the President said. “ If I know my son, then he will attack soon, try to recapture the momentum. We can lose one Plate Sector, but we can't have two of them get so damaged. Once is unfortunate; two is _failure._ Shinra does not _fail._ Our reputation will suffer if we do, and our reputation is our greatest weapon, past anything even your twisted mind can create.”

Scarlet nodded her head, acknowledging the point.

“ Be ready when he attacks,” Shinra said. “ I want this rebellion _crushed_. Let's talk about presentation; now that we have a timeline, we'll need to prepare you with some lines, Heidegger. The world will be watching this; we want to give them a good show.”

Barret withdrew a notepad from his office supplies drawer, and began writing down what he was listening to. Rufus was due to send him information soon; he'd pass this off at the same time. And in the week he had, he'd have to figure out what he could do to mess with this Airbuster thing... what orders he could misfile, what information on weaknesses he could pull from the network... anything at all that would help Rufus and AVALANCHE come out on top, so that they could, finally, put a stop to all Shinra's evil.

It was why he'd done all he'd done, for the last five years. All the things he'd done, both big and small. Saving Rufus' life, at great risk to himself; grateful that Vincent thought he'd died, grateful that he'd been able to reach him, in his little safehouse on Midgar's outskirts, betrayed by one of his own Turks and left for dead in the rubble next to his arm and his dead dog. Becoming a Department Head, asking for the position after Reeve was taken by Lucrecia to a fate no sane person could comprehend, and the President had stripped the job of any power it held. It was why he'd learned computer code and electrical engineering... all of it, all done so that he could make up for what he'd done. It was all part of the plan.

This was all his fault, after all. It had been _his_ hands that signed the paper that put the world on this particular set of railroad tracks. This was his fault. His responsibility. He hadn't known what it would cost at the time... but that didn't excuse him from trying to solve it anyway.

So it was up to him to find a way to stop this train he'd inadvertently put them on. He had'nt known what it would cost, to back up Shinra... but now knowing, he could not turn his head. No outside force could derail this train, the War had proven that; so an inside job was required. It was his great task, to throw the brakes.

Barret Wallace was a man of honor, and he was putting a stop to this train.


	11. Jack and Jill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back!
> 
> Hope ya'll enjoy it; this chapter ballooned on me! The Reactor 5 mission, from Tifa's perspective.

Chapter 11

**Jack and Jill**

Days passed after Reno's raid, and Tifa found herself growing accustomed to her new circumstances. She hadn't been rich all her life, after all; for all the riches of her SOLDIER career, some part of her had always been that mountain girl, growing up solidly middle class.

Poverty was a far fall from those halycon days, of Zangan's teachings and piano lessons, but Tifa was tough; she adjusted.

Her work after Reno's impromptu midnight mission had mostly been simple guard duty. Sector 7 had realized that the angel-dog thing she'd killed had scared off almost all of the monsters in the junkpile; with this revelation in hand, the people had descended upon it en masse, hoping to do a full-scale pillaging before monsters had a chance to come back. It would be an epic feat they might never have another chance to do again; at Wymer's request, Tifa had been conscripted, alongside AVALANCHE, to bolster the neighborhood watch's numbers.

As the best fighter, Tifa's job had been to stand guard in a central area, and respond whenever a call for help was issued, be it because someone had found a scrapped robot that wasn't _entirely_ decommissioned or stumbled upon one of the rare nests of monsters that had managed to dodge the abomination that had passed through. Besides the usual influx of slithering bug-beasts, malformed mammals, and homicidal machines, however, there had been a new wrinkle: _human_ predators.

The group had descended on Rude, who'd called for help- there had been twelve of them. A group of muscular folk in red jackets, each bearing a tattoo on one arm of a single feathery scarlet wing, wielding knives. The fisticuffs duo had handily pummeled them, though Rude kept her from killing them all like she'd initially planned; he'd instead sent them back, asking them to tell their boss that Sector 7 wanted no part of Wall Market's business.

They'd complied, to her surprise, grumbling but leaving with more grace than you'd think criminal goons would have. Rude had thanked her, stammering just a little, not quite able to look her in the eyes.

( She recognized that... warmth. A crush. She almost smiled; she didn't feel up to responding to anything like that, from  _anyone_ , right now... but Rude was a good man, maybe the best of AVALANCHE, and she liked knowing that someone like that thought well of her.)

Wymer had told her later that the goons had been from Wall Market's big gang, the Crimson Wings. Weird bunch, more like a cult than a criminal organization; nobody even knew who led them. The Crimson Wings just called their boss “the Rosso”, and all orders came out of the mouth of the Rosso's head lieutenant, a woman named Merle. Rumors said a lot of things- that they had Shinra connections, that Merle was the real leader and hiding behind the whole Rosso persona, that the boss had a taste for muscular young men and that they very rarely survived the Rosso's appetites. Lots of unpleasantness.

Regardless of the stories, what _was_ hard truth was that the Crimson Wings were dangerous, and Wymer had warned her to be careful. Tifa had said she would be, but privately wasn't too concerned. What were a bunch of street criminals going to do to a 1st-Class SOLDIER, steal her wallet?

Joke's on them; she barely had any gil on her anyway.

Days passed in that manner, and despite the occasional distraction, it was a dull job. Guard duty- as anyone with any military experience could tell you- was somehow both the tensest and the most goddamn _boring_ work anyone could do, and this was no different. She stood around, looked tough, and mostly spent her time busily ignoring the people arguing around her about who had what claim to which item. 

Some part of her- the old part- wanted to jump in, mediate, calm tempers, but the old part had also trusted Aerith and Shinra, so she ignored it. New Tifa wasn't being paid to care, so she didn't. Wymer, Marco, and Cloud were the ones who dismantled the growing tensions, defusing arguments and dividing goods as best they could, keeping people calm and moving in one direction. Styles differed- Wymer commanded, Marco preached, Cloud arbitrated- but it worked; the triple leadership kept Sector 7 rummaging in orderly fashion, a pack of well-trained vultures.

Her job ended with the sun's setting; once it was dark, it was too dangerous to mess around in the heap. Even with few monsters, it was easy to get hurt moving scrap, especially in the dark. Sector 7 drifted back into town, most heading home, but more than a few heading to Cloud's pub. Tifa and AVALANCHE were among them, Tifa not quite part of the group but willing to accompany them, her compromise between Old Tifa and New. 

The pub was ready for them; Cloud would quit an hour or so before sunset to prepare, firing up his kitchens to receive the customers. It was good for business, this great work; scavengers came stumbling in hungry after a hard day's work scrounging, not wanting to have to make dinner on top of everything else, and the gil flowed freely.

Business was  _so_ brisk, in fact, that Cloud had to hire extra help; it took the form of that Wutai teenager from the Canary, Yuffie, who'd apparently lost her last job for some reason or another. She worked hard, didn't complain, and that was all Cloud needed; she couldn't cook to save her life, but she did a good job taking orders, waiting tables and cleaning, letting him focus on the kitchen where his talents lay.

He didn't stay in the back all night, though; whenever he had a rare break, he'd come forward, and offer free castings of esuna to anyone who got cut out in the junkyard. A necessity; not only was the junkyard a  _Shinra_ junkyard, meaning any number of horrible diseases or plagues might be waiting in it to erupt inside human flesh, but there were also the more mundane dangers of rusty metal, lockjaw, and other diseases that predated Shinra's experiments in bacterial atrocity. 

The spell couldn't cure tetanus once it got a good grip on you, but cast early, esuna could help the body fight it off, the closest thing the slums had to a vaccine. To this, Rufus added the weight of his own castings of cure on those injured, and a great case of ethers for him and Cloud to drink when the magic started running dry.

(  _Just practical_ , Rufus had told himself, justifying his actions in cold terms, the way his father had taught him in his youth.  _AVALANCHE needs good PR, now more than ever._ This he thought, and refused to consider how it eased his guilty heart to heal. Emotion was weakness, as his father had taught him, and even now had trouble questioning.)

On the second night, Tifa had asked Cloud to give her his healing materia; he should focus on his work. She'd cast his spells for him, even if she wasn't being paid for it. Maybe it didn't fit with the New Tifa she was trying to be, maybe it was too much like Old and Betrayed Tifa... but it wasn't like she was  _trusting_ these people, or giving all that much of herself. With the ethers in hand, it wasn't even that draining.

She was just... giving a hand. That was all.

But the gratitude was real, the praise genuine, and the cold ashes of her heart grew warm.

( A thought occurs to Tifa one night before bed, when she realizes that this might be the rest of her life, that she may well live and die here in these slums; and the thought is, simply put, _This isn't so bad_.)

-

One night, several days into the Great Junkyard Scavenger Hunt- which Johnny, local dumbass, had come up with, the name spreading like a disease amongst Sector 7- Tifa was leaning back in her favored seat in the Buster, resting legs exhausted from standing around all day, arms folded, facial expression set in her favored cold neutrality. Cheerful voices surrounded her, the excited chatter of gossip; Cloud, in a rare moment of peace, was at the bar's front, talking with his customers about their lives, congratulating newlweds, toasting new pregnancies, sympathizing with new sorrows.

_No wonder they love him_ , Tifa thought, slitted eyes drifting to Cloud and widening, just a little, as she looked at him.  _He feeds them, he heals them, he shares their concerns; he's half a father to the younger ones and brother to the older. If this place had a mayor, it'd be him._

She wondered if it would ever stop being strange, to see Cloud, once so angry, act so gentle... but then again, when she'd wandered into the mountains chasing her dead mother, he  _had_ tried to save her. Maybe... maybe this was who Cloud had been, all along. Maybe the war had given him a chance to rediscover himself, underneath the isolation both social and self-imposed. War changed people, as Tifa well knew, but Cloud was the only person Tifa knew whom war had changed for the  _better_ .

Admirable. 

Two women entered, alongside a kid whose was clearly trying to show a brave face, and mostly ended up looking kind of goofy. There was a nasty scratch down his arm, hastily bandaged, dark red staining the cloth; streaks of rust on both sides of the cut told the story of what had happened. One woman had a hand on his shoulder, and they stayed near the entrance as the other worked up the courage to approach Tifa, finally stepping forward.

“ Miss Tifa, ma'am,” she said, voice harsh, face a squashed-in sort of deal that wouldn't be considered pretty by a drunkard, “ I... I'm sorry to bother you, but my son got cut on some rusty metal, would you heal him?”

“ Sure,” Tifa said, sitting up and unfolding her arms, putting one finger to the materia in her bracer. “ Bring him here.”

“ She says it's ok,” the woman called back. “ Bring him up here, hon.”

The other woman, a tall and gawky sort, walked the boy up. He looked at Tifa, all desperate youthful masculinity. The other woman kept looking around.

“ That Rufus feller ain't here, is he?”

Probably wanting a cure as well, given how bad the boy was cut.

“ I can cast cure as well,” Tifa said.

“ Would ya?” the woman asked, and Tifa nodded.

She reached for the materia, familiar now; it was always odd to use materia that someone else had used for a long time, parts of them stuck to it, parts of their soul lingering on things long-used. This was Cloud's oldest materia, as he'd told her, and she could  _feel_ it; the magic in it felt like Cloud, strange as that was to say. Felt warm, friendly, gentle.

( Tifa wondered what  _her_ materia would feel like now, and her mind skittered away from that question.)

“ Take your bandage off,” she requested. 

“ Okay,” he said, steeling himself for a second before ripping it off in one go. His face made fascinating contortions as he tried not to make a sound, tears filling his eyeballs.

“ I'm good,” he told no one in particular, squeaking it out. One of his moms squeezed his shoulder.

Tifa resisted the urge to smile at the twin displays of boyish stoicism or maternal affection. Instead, she stretched a hand out to the kid's wound, pointing at his open wound, and his veins lit up gently as the esuna flowed out of her and into him, all to the quiet sound of crackling campfires.

She hoped it helped him. Shame Shinra wouldn't pay for vaccines in the slums, but... well. You focused on what you could do, now. 

With any possible diseases at least weakened, she turned to the second spell, from her own materia; with the vague sounds of happy kiais and military marches in the air, her magic knit the cut in his flesh back together again. The little guy grinned as the pain receded.

“ Thank you, Missy Tifa!” he said.

“ ...You're welcome,” she said, slowly. His moms smiled at him, and gave Tifa small bows.

“ Thank ya, honey,” the short one said. “ Got awful spooked when he got cut. Had a cousin get lockjaw... ain't pretty.”

Tifa shrugged noncommittally.

“ It's nothing.”

“ Thank ya anyway” she said, the family wandering over to a table that opened up with almost perfect timing. Yuffie popped over from out of apparently thin air, taking their orders in her chipper, casually coarse way.

Tifa returned to her former position, memories playing in her head from the sound of her magic. She'd always loved the pomp and circumstance of the military; for a mountain girl like herself, it was a sign she'd really  _made_ it, that she had become more than just some Western continent nobody. When she heard those deep Eastern marches, and stood alongside her fellow SOLDIERs... that was when she knew she was  _somebody_ .

Aerith had loved them, too, for much the same reason. It was what they'd bonded over, when they first met; Tifa had caught Aerith swaying gently in tune with the march they'd played at her 1 st Class promotion celebration. Aeris had told Tifa she loved the  _respect_ they gave her, as the top 1 st Class SOLDIER, something she sorely wanted. They'd started talking about it and that was it- that was the simple way in which Tifa had gotten to know Aerith, all those years ago. A conversation about military music.

Over the years, they'd both cheerfully volunteered for parades, radio shows, posters, all the little pieces of propaganda Shinra so loved and was so good at, reveling in the grandeur of it all. Tifa remembered one in particular, sitting with the Wusheng- well, what was left of them, after Godo's dishonor- atop a Wutai-made tank. She'd  _loved_ that shot; it had been so natural, so informal, one of Gorkii's ideas. He'd suggested it on a whim while they were campaigning against Mideel; they found a cameraman, staged the shot, and the executives back home had loved it as much as Tifa had. 

They'd even written a song; it wasn't very good, Aeris had been a horrible singer and Tifa's piano skills were rusty after so long at war and not music hall, but they'd had fun working on it in their spare time.  _The March of the SOLDIERs_ , they'd called it. Just a little ditty, and that had been the funniest part, that two 1st-Class SOLDIERs, celebrities the world over, would produce something so amateur hour as their musical debut. They'd both giggled about it.

Tifa wondered if she could recall the tune... but she doubted anyone would find a piano in the trash. 

( Maybe Elena, but no one else.)

Some amazing stuff had been found, though, even if none of it was musically inclined (save three guitars, one of which Johnny had taken as part of his perennial effort to start a band.) The pub gossip, and her own work at guard duty, had clued Tifa in on the majority of interesting finds. Most of it was broken, of course, but that was fine; Sector 7's folk were mechanically inclined, had the ingenuity of survivors, and there was little they could not repair or turn into spare parts for other needs.

The big prizes had been air conditioners and heaters; Midgar had hot summers and cold winters, being in that perfectly temperate zone where one got to feel the front  _and_ the back of Gaia's slapping hand, and the AC units and heaters would save lives during the worst periods of both. Past those mundane holy grails were other slummer riches; still good leather boots, heavy duty gloves with only a few holes, jackets of rich material that were mostly shreds but could still be turned into pieces to use on other projects. There were even a few materia that were whole enough to be used as-is or repaired. Reno found an ice materia, and Rufus personally scrounged up any and all materia pieces he could, hoping to make some new types of bullet in his personal smithy.

( Tifa idly wondered if any of these items were things she'd thrown away, in the past.)

There were other things, the more confusing and bizarre items, that made them wonder who had thrown  _this_ away. An entire truck, completely functional, except it had no wheels; Elena, of course, had found that one, but only after accidentally triggering a landslide of stacked cars that nearly killed her. Tires were quickly found, and the truck turned to hauling the big stuff out of the junkyard. 

A cardboard box full of little packs of matches for no explicable reason; it had no company stamp on it or anything to explain why it was there. The matches were good, the box shielded from the elements by the junk all around it; Tifa even snagged a few packs, Wymer distributing them out. Never knew when you might need some fire. 

A Shinra shipping box, unopened, in which the weaponsmith had found several pieces of mithril- _mithril_ , which you could only get in distant Kalm, where they used to mine the stuff. The weaponsmith had been excited like hell; Tifa wished him well with whatever project he had going on.

Though looking at her own weapons- the ragged, slapped-together gloves she'd been using ever since she arrived- maybe she ought to pay him a visit.

The pub eventually began winding down as the night wore on, and the people drifted out the door, happy, full, and exhausted. As the night ended, Tifa leaned back in her chair, watching as Yuffie and Cloud cleaned. She'd offered to help, a few days ago, but it turned out that all her years of having other people clean her living spaces and her great strength combined poorly; after the second broken cup, she had given up on washing dishes, and her attempt to sweep had failed miserably because she hadn't even thought to sweep under the tables.

So she was content to let them work. When they were done, she'd walk Cloud back to their apartment building, like she'd done every night; bodyguard work, she'd said, when he asked. He'd told her he didn't have enough gil. She had just shrugged.

( She hadn't told him she was taking her payment in his smiles, in the warmth of the greater man he had become, a beautiful sunflower growing from the seed of the bitter child he had been.)

Just as things were winding down, Rufus popped inside.

“ Hey,” the young man said, with his customary gruffness, but he said no more, simply taking a seat across from Tifa. Not entirely sure how to respond, Tifa chose silence, her new old standby.

“ We're closed, buddy,” Yuffie said. Rufus snickered.

“ Not to me,” he said. “ Cloud's an old friend.”

“ I don't know,” Yuffie said, smiling cheekily, “ I don't think I recognize you.”

Rufus frowned at her. “ _Yuffie._ ”

“ He knows my name!” Yuffie declared dramatically. “ How can that be?!”

Rufus put his remaining hand to his head as Yuffie snickered.

“ Hey boss!” Yuffie called. “ Your boyfriend's here. I don't think he's enjoying putting up with me though. That, or he's just got real bad resting bastard face.”

Rufus glared at her as she gave her best shit-eating grin. Cloud's response accompanied the man himself as he left the back.

“ He's not my boyfriend,” he said, “ he's too much trouble. And you shouldn't take that as encouragement to hook me up with that guy you know in Wall Market.”

Yuffie gasped dramatically and put a hand over her heart. “ But it would be so perfect! Jules is a goddamn saint, you're a goddamn saint, you two would be the most pure and perfect couple in the entire world!”

“ Too pure,” Rufus opined. “ They would kiss, and all Midgar would be consumed in the flash of Holy.”

“ I didn't know you were religious!” Yuffie responded. “ But no, you're right, that would be a risk. You can't make two perfect cinnamon rolls love each other. They're already too good for this sinful world. If they start dating, it'll be too beautiful and the world'll just have to kill them.”

She pondered a moment. “ Hmm. You know, _I_ know some real assholes, we can pair you with the opposite, get a whole duality thing going. It might even save your life, Cloud! Like Jessie, she's terrible, you two would be great!”

Cloud rolled his eyes. “ I'm not going out with that Jessie girl you know, either. From everything you told me, it's all a game to her, and I'm looking for something serious.”

Yuffie rolled her eyes as she finished sweeping. “ Come on, you are a  _hundred_ percent her type. You're thin and bishy and she's  _super_ into nice guys. She likes corrupting them. Also into weird sex, and you need some kink in your life. Don't think of it as a commitment, think of it as an  _experience!_ ”

Cloud slapped the palm of his hand to his face.

“ Yuffie, for the love of- you are a  _baby_ , you can't talk like that!”

“ I'm nineteen, boss, and I live in the slums, same as you do,” she answered back, grin wide and toothy. “ Anyway, I'm all done here. You want me to throw Rufus out before I go?”

“ No, I've got Tifa here if I need that done,” Cloud said. Tifa, feeling a response was needed but not sure what fit with her 'aloof mercenary' persona, gave Yuffie a silent thumbs-up in acknowledgment. It seemed to work; Yuffie laughed.

“ Alright, I'll leave you be then. See ya tomorrow, boss!”

With that, the Wutai girl left, leaving the trio alone in the pub. Rufus gave it a moment,waiting, before turning to Tifa.

“ I'd like to hire you for another job,” Rufus said.

Tifa stayed silent for a moment, gave him the gruff mercenary treatment as she considered his offer. She trusted Cloud- somewhat despite herself- but Rufus was another matter altogether. The first Reactor bombing... it hadn't been Reno's fault, all those deaths, but the aftermath...

No, she didn't want to deal with that again.

“ Price has tripled,” Tifa answered, looking not at him, but straight ahead, remote and detached.  _That_ ought to get him to leave, without having to say no and disappoint Cloud. She was just asking for what she was worth, that's all. Not her fault Rufus couldn't pay-

“ Done,” Rufus answered.

It took Tifa a long moment to realize what he'd said, and when she did, her head swiveled towards him.

“ I'm sorry?” she said.

“ Here's half,” Rufus said, and out of his pocket pulled out half what she'd asked for. “ Other half when the job's done. We're going after Reactor 5.”

“ That's the next job?” Cloud asked.

Rufus nodded. “ We'll be going in two days.”

“ I'll close the pub early then,” Cloud said. “ Get some sleep before we go.”

“  _We?_ ” Tifa asked, bewildered.

-

Tifa woke up the day of the mission at her usual time. A shame, since she could have slept in; she'd begged off guard duty today. She didn't want to wear herself out before tonight.

Outside, standing on the apartment's balcony, Marco was just starting to preach. His efforts during the Great Junkyard Scavenger Hunt-  _dammit, Johnny_ \- had led to more than a few people joining the Descendants, though none had the weird white eyes yet. Marco said they'd get those later, depending on their worth, called them 'inductees' for now. Once their value was measured, their place would be decided upon.

Sounded like a cult to Tifa's ears... but then again, Marco never asked for money, either for his own purse or sent somewhere else. In fact, he encouraged them  _not_ to give him gil, and gave gil freely if asked. Strange. Maybe he actually meant all his nonsense.

Tifa listened to him vaguely as she tried to drift back to sleep, wondering when Marle would show up to yell at him for being out so early.

“ You may have heard this world was a Garden once, a Garden that went by the name of Eden. I tell you, this is no lie. Much do the texts of the world have wrong, but this, this they got right; this world was once a Garden. Can you imagine it? A perfect world, Heaven, right here, not some distant land after death but something you can touch. Endless rivers full of fish who would leap into the hand, miles of fruit ripe for the picking, milk and honey as far as the eye can see. Anything you could want, all the sweet bounty of Gaia, at your fingertips. Oh, if you were to see even a glimpse of that place, it would live in your dreams forever, such was the beauty of it.”

Tifa rolled over, wondered if she could find something to stuff in her ears. There were disadvantages to living next to a preacher.

“ But this Garden was not the only one! Long ago, the Cetra crossed the stars, and each world they touched turned into an Eden. Our world is but one of many perfect worlds made by the Cetra, for reasons we mere humans can only guess at. But that is what they did; they crossed the stars, and they changed the worlds they touched.”

The crowd responded; sounded louder than it had yesterday. Tifa hoped Marle would get him soon. All this preaching was making her uncomfortable, for reasons she couldn't quite parse.

“ The Cetra made our world perfect. We have ruined it, to our sorrow; we have polluted the Garden they made, in the long years since the Cetra turned their face from us. You know we have. We stand here in the refuse of the world; here, down in the dumps. You know this to be true. There is wisdom in this gutter; you have seen the world, tasted its despair, seen the slums of progress. Why, you live in the very refuse of Shinra, underneath the _greatest_ city of Gaia, if you will forgive me for my sarcasm. A rotting pizza in the sky, missing a slice! That is _progress,_ that is _perfection,_ that is _greatness_ , when merely _human_ hands make those things! They are murderers of the world. AVALANCHE, for all their violence, for all the terrible harm their actions have caused, have that much of it right; there is poison above us, and it drips down and it chokes our children.”

True enough. She should know; she'd helped spread that poison all over the world. If she'd known... something like guilt, in the pit of her stomach. If she'd known, if she hadn't been so blinded by all the flash and glitz around her, maybe she'd have joined Zack, instead of killing him. Zack, the best of them, inheritor of SOLDIER's honor when Angeal disappeared, an honor Tifa had stained. He'd seen the truth, even when his life had been as full of bright lights as Tifa's, and... then she'd killed him.

_Zack..._

“ But despair not. All I have said is true, but this, too, I tell you, and know to be true; the Garden can be remade. We can make a new Garden,  _here_ , plant our own Trees of Life and Knowledge and eat of their sweet fruit. We can learn to be  _more_ than merely human. We can inherit the greatness of the Cetra, we can become their Descendants, and all their glories remade! The Graden is not lost, so long as we can plant a single seed, and let it grow. We can become immortal, and we, too, can travel the stars, making new Gardens of each world we come to, become the architects of Heaven on Gaia, here and now.”

“  **Marco, what are you doing? We've talked about this!** ”

As Marle continued her ranting, Tifa finally fell asleep... but it was uneasy, troubled.

-

She was falling.

She was falling, spinning in the air as the wind spun her around, falling in total silence and total darkness. She jerked, struggled, something she couldn't see had a grip on her. She tore at it until it broke, it fell away from her, but then there was something  _inside_ , things wriggling inside her skin, pushing through her veins like a root system. 

She fell, clutching at herself, until a voice spoke in the wind and blackness.

_We can make a new Garden here_ , it said to her, repeating Marco's words, but it wasn't the preacher's voice. She didn't know  _who_ it was, but where her neighbor's tones rolled with thunder and bombast, this one was... uncertain. Quiet, nervous, scared... unsure.

(...Familiar?) 

A vision in the darkness, downturned lips, downcast eyes, a body hunched in on itself, frustratingly vague, rendered clean of details.

_There'll be others, she said, but no one will be... like me. I... I could do it alone... but I don't want to be alone. She's not right about everything. I- I mean, Adam had his Eve, right? Why shouldn't I have a companion like he did? No reason I shouldn't. M-maybe you don't think that's the best metaphor... I'm sorry, I'm messing all this up._

A vision of someone biting their lip, and then the face was gone, Tifa was in the blackness again, night never-ending. Wind blew from somewhere nearby, wind, the breeze carried scents to her she knew, she was somewhere she knew well. The sounds of the mountains, of her home. Smells of father's cooking, of childhood voices, she could almost make out the shape of it in the darkness.

A sensation of heat.

( _the ice and the fire and the mistake_ )

The smells were gone, only the stink of smoke remaining, and the sound of screams.

( _the ice and the fire and the mistake_ )

Sometime around noon, Tifa jerked awake in a cold sweat, the shredded remnants of her blanket all around her, torn to pieces by her hands in her sleep.

She took in a rattling breath, and realized, as she brought her hands to her face, that she'd been crying.

-

They were taking the evening train. Tifa got onboard, glad that her general gruffness in dealing with other people meant no one could tell she was feeling... off. Napping had been a bad idea. She couldn't recall her dream, but to make her wake up crying and feeling so horrible... it must have been a doozy.

She'd bought a miner's delight from the _Canary's Last Meal_ that afternoon, and the good food helped... but her conscious mind circled and circled the mystery of her subconscious, worrying at it like a shark.

“ Okay, split up throughout the train,” Rufus said quietly to his former Turks. “ Me, Cloud and Tifa will stay in the back. Keep quiet and low until we get to the target.”

“ You got it, boss!” Reno said, waggling his eyebrows. “ You know me- sneaky, sneaky.”

“ Like a tuba player in a tornado,” Elena commented dryly.

Rude said nothing, merely directed them forwards- though he did give Tifa a quick sideways glance she barely caught, then shyly left.

With that done, the trio found their own places in the back car. She leaned against a train wall, pondering the mystery. Cloud sat in front of her as the train moved, Rufus lounging in the seat across from him, and all was peaceful for a time as they kept company with their own thoughts.

For Tifa, this meant pondering her dream. What had it been? She remembered so many awful things, both deeds she'd done and things she'd simply seen. The feel of Zack's spine breaking in her hands, the Wutai Wasteland's degenerated mutants, entire companies of allied troops consumed in the flash of traitorous Rocket Town's missiles. Soldiers and civilians alike dying awful deaths, the way a Raven had struggled as she held his head underwater, the horrible moment when Elfe- the one warrior in all the world who had ever matched Aeris blow for blow- ran her friend through with her sword, straight through the legendary SOLDIER's guts.

( Tifa had managed to save Aeris' life that day, knocking Elfe away and bodily hauling Aeris to the medics, Elfe chasing her the whole time, leaving the sword in to stem the bloodflow even as she cast Cure after Cure to keep Aeris alive. Aeris, so small in her arms, blood running down her lips as her innards bled, the woman who had stood like a goddess above the battlefield tiny and mortal. It had been... horrifying. The scar never did heal quite right.)

All these nightmares, keeping each other company in her skull.

...So what was so horrible that her mind simply ran  _away_ from it?

Ads and news played on the train's TV screens, Tifa noticing them but not truly taking them in, lost in her thoughts. A news show talking of Lucrecia's new shelters, whose rushed construction was going well, right before a commercial break. An ad for a new kind of potion, followed by a commercial for a TV special, speculating on the whereabouts of various famous missing criminals, ranging from the Turk traitor, Tseng, to some Western Alliance scientist named Shalua, who Tifa vaguely recalled hearing about in war councils. Not really her business; not as important as Fuhito, not worth having a 1 st Class SOLDIER sent after her.

Not that Tifa had ever been one to make those kinds of decisions. She was a SOLDIER, not an officer; those had been decisions for Angeal at first, then Aerith or Zack when Angeal disappeared and they decided they needed more than one officer for SOLDIER. Co-officers, Aerith and her love, until the day Zack abandoned them for the Alliance and stole half of their comrades doing it, leading a rebellion against Shinra.

(  _Until the day I killed him_ , Tifa thought, and felt his neck underneath her hands again, a phantom limb sensation of the way the hard bones had shifted inside his soft flesh as she snapped them.)

From the front of the car, three people in suits were talking, snatches of their conversation drifting back to the erstwhile AVALANCHE members.

“ How's your sister doing?” the black-haired man asked the woman.

“ Better, but I'm hoping Lucrecia's new clinics open soon; her wounds were so extensive... burns all over her body,” she said, shaking her head. “ She's barely clinging on.”

“ Damn AVALANCHE,” the blonde man next to her said, shaking his head. “ I heard the news say they're some special ops program from the Western Alliance, come back for one last hurrah.”

“ What's the point of trying to ruin Midgar now?” the woman said. “ We won! The war's been over for five years!”

“ What about the rumors that someone's seen Tifa Lockheart again?” the blonde asked. The black-haired man waved a hand dismissively.

“ People are always seeing celebrities in the slums. Tifa's dead, and she died a hero. If she were here, Shinra would be giving her a house on the Plate.”

“ Or telling her to go punch AVALANCHE's skull in, and avenge my sister,” the woman said.

Some part of Tifa was amused at all this, though she mostly ignored it. “ Celebrity” was an odd word to use on herself; made her think of theater, of Genesis and his rhapsodizing about that one play he'd liked. She wondered what had happened to him; killed, it said officially, but then again, she was supposed to be dead, too. Lux had been terribly surprised to see her... 

...She'd left him alive. Maybe not the best decision. But... she'd been so violent, to the weapon shop owner, and it had been such a shock, to have Cloud reprimand her... and Lux had been a student of hers. Between the two events, she'd decided to be as merciful as she could be; she'd still killed most of the grunts, but not Lux. She'd more or less had to kill some of them, and she didn't really regret it; she hadn't known them, and Tifa would not pretend that she was  _non_ -violent.

But she _had_ known Lux, and at the last moment made a different choice. She didn't have to be _as_ violent.

_He'll betray you_ , a voice whispered, New Tifa admonishing Old.  _He's probably already done it. Shinra knows you're here now. How much force will they direct at you now? You have doomed yourself. Trust has killed us._

Frowning at the internal criticism, which she had no retort to, she barely noticed Rufus getting up and approaching the executives.

“ Excuse me,” he said, cloak still over his gun arm. “ I apologize, but I'm a veteran from the war. Were you talking about the Western Alliance?”

“ Oh, well, thank you for your service,” the black-haired man said, looking Rufus over critically. “ Bit young to be a vet, aren't you?”

“ When Shinra called, I didn't bother the recruiter with my age,” Rufus said with a shrug. “ Where'd you serve at?”

“ I- I was maintaining society,” the black-haired man said stiffly, bristling. 

_Ah,_ Tifa thought.  _He's a MISSILE._ A term the common grunts had loved; MISSILE, a play on SOLDIER. It meant Missed It Sitting Still, Insufferable Little Executive. The men and women who'd dodged compulsory service by taking office jobs in suits. Good name for them; not only was the acronym fun, but they tended to explode if you taunted them about it.

The woman turned to Rufus.

“ I was a captain before I put on a suit,” she said. “ Where did you serve, son?”

“ Fort Tamblin in the furthest west,” Rufus said. “ Near the Wutai Wasteland.”

The woman sucked a breath in through her teeth. “ You've served time and a half, then. I got lucky; I was a naval officer, mostly just transported troops and supplies, never saw a real firefight. Did see the Wasteland, once, near the war's end- we ended up circling it, hiding from some of the sea monsters the Mideel guys were controlling. Me and the crew looked at it through binoculars... saw... saw some stuff.”

She shivered. “ Never could figure out why we stuck soldiers out there.”

“ Mostly to keep the Alliance from raiding the old Reactor for ideas,” Rufus said. “ Some of the Rocket Town types liked to poke and prod in that area, looking for more poison to stuff in their missiles. And the Cosmo Canyon mystics were looking for monsters to train and throw at troops in other theaters- the Wasteland makes the worst stuff.”

“ Except Round Island,” the blonde said. The black-haired man groaned.

“ Don't,” he warned the man. “ Not more conspiracy theories. Round Island isn't real. It's like silver chocobos and the secret basement underneath the Gold Saucer that holds all of Shinra's money alongside giant monster guardians. They're just urban legends.”

“ Round Island is real!” the man insisted. “ Why do you think no shipping routes go to that area?”

“ Because there's no one to ship to up there,” the woman said, briefly leaning into their conversation. “ Round Island's supposed location is in the northeast, near liteally nothing. Who would they trade with up there? Modeoheim and Icicle Inn are the biggest towns on the Northern Continent and they're on the opposite side from Round Island's whereabouts- assuming it's real.”

“ At any rate,” Rufus said, cutting in, “ you mentioned the Western Alliance? I thought we were done with them.”

“ Apparently not,” the black-haired man said, snorting. “ I heard some strange people have been seen at the ruins of Cosmo Canyon. That's not counting whatever it is that keeps attacking Shinra employees at the Gold Saucer...”

“ Oh, so you believe in the Saucer Slayer, but  _Round Island_ is a step too far?!?” the blonde said, and as the two men devolved into an argument over the respective merits of their conspiracy theories, the former captain shook her head and turned to Rufus.

“ Yeah, apparently we didn't get them all,” she said. “ Not surprised. You can't fight the entire Planet and not expect to miss a few people. There's only so many people in the military, after all. Anyway, AVALANCHE is supposedly some old spec-ops Alliance group that's finally surfaced. Don't know why they haven't acted before now, though I've heard people say that the higher-ups suspect they might have had a hand in killing our 1 st Class SOLDIERs half a decade ago- remember Tifa and Aerith? Apparently they killed them, which freaks me out, if I'm gonna be blunt. I thought after Elfe and Zack were killed, there wasn't anybody who could match those two.”

Tifa felt a little pride at that; maybe silly, but it was always nice to be acknowledged for your strength. The woman sighed, and fished around in her purse for a cigarette, lighting it and drawing in a deep lungful of smoke. Puffs followed her next few words.

“ Don't know why they'd bother coming back now; no Alliance to defend, not anymore. Costa del Sol got replaced by New Wutai, Mideel's a tourist trap, Gongaga and Rocket Town are tamed, and Nibelheim and the Canyon are holes in the ground. We even rebuilt Corel and Junon so they don't even have those victories to hold onto, not anymore. No people to save, no territory to claim, nothing left... but then again, maybe they're not trying to defend anything. Maybe they're just trying to make  _us_ lose, too. Enemies of progress, is all it is.”

“ Perhaps,” Rufus said. “ I'm ready to fight if it all starts up again, though.”

She smiled at him. “ At ease, soldier. You've served your time; this is a small-scale thing, spies and small squads, not armies slamming into each other. This is a matter for Turks and SOLDIER types, not the military.”

“ Thank you,” Rufus said. “ Sorry to bother you.”

“ I've always got time for my fellow vets,” the woman said, waving him on and taking another drag on her cigarette as she turned to her still-arguing fellow executives. While the two argued about some harp or another, Rufus walked back to his seat.

“ What was that about?” Cloud whispered to him once he was settled in.

“ Wanted to know what Shinra's focus was for the propaganda,” Rufus said. “ Gives me an idea of how to spin things myself. Kind of strange they'd go for the Alliance; that bogeyman's been dead for five years.”

“ So was I,” Tifa said.

“ Where  _were_ you?” Cloud asked.

Before the conversation could continue, they hit the scanners. Tifa didn't pay any attention, still wrestling with her own thoughts... at least, not until the lights turned bright red, and the sirens sounded.

“ I'm pretty sure I know the answer, but just in case- what's that mean?” Cloud asked, grabbing tight on the long black box containing Masamune next to him, disguised as a guitar case.

“ It means Reno's an idiot,” Rufus hissed as he jumped up. “ They must have upgraded after his little midnight trip. Come on, they're locking the car down- run for the next one!”

He led the way, Cloud following, Tifa taking up the rear. They ran past the confused executives, save the naval captain, who stared at Tifa with her jaw dropped open, cigarette falling from her lips. Apparently she hadn't noticed her before now.

Tifa had no time to ponder her celebrity; Rufus almost ripped the door off its hinges, barreling through to the next car, Cloud and Tifa right behind him. In the next car, Elena turned to them.

“ Boss! Reno fucked up!”

“ I noticed!” Rufus growled. “ Next car, next car!”

Passengers in this car stared at them, but nobody dared to get in their way. They were halfway down the car when Tifa heard it- a high-pitched buzzing sound, like a fan going way too fast.

“ What's that?” Elena asked, right before the windows exploded.

The people screamed as flying glass cut them, shredding skin and clothes alike. Tifa shielded her eyes on reflex, and as the flying glass stopped slapping into her gloves, she peeked out, seeing her assailants. Airborne robotic drones; they were long, spidery things, round central bodies and splayed legs. The engines in those centers were the devices making those high-pitched whines, a single air materia visible on their top, vibrating at high speed as artificial mako ran through them to keep the drone in the air. Long legs extended outwards, tasers glittering with lightning at their ends. 

“ Boss, trouble!” Elena yelled, drawing her gun and opening fire.

“ I can see that!” Rufus yelled, jerking the cloak off his arm, the roar of his shotgun joining the pop-pop of Elena's gun. A drone was scrambled as Rufus' materia-laden buckshot fried its circuits; Elena's second shot hit the air materia on one drone and it burst apart in a small dust devil, scattering robot chunks that thankfully missed hitting anyone.

“ Not enough room for my sword!” Cloud announced, ducking a swipe from the nearest drone. He compensated quickly, using the guitar case as a blunt club, thrusting it into the drone and knocking it away. Tifa assisted by grabbing the central chunk of one long-limbed bot and bodily hurling it into another, destroying both.

“ Keep going!” Rufus yelled, waving them on as metal covered the windows and door of the car he'd just left, and a robotic voice over the intercom began to count down towards lockdown for this car, too. “ No time to fight!”

The group charged, people still screaming or trying to get away from them, more drones piling in. Tifa sent lightning behind her into the closest, a single quick bolt to buy time as they barreled on to the next car, in and out as the metal slammed down. Drones were already in the next car, Reno and Rude wailing on them as they entered.

“ Boss, I may have made a mistake!” Reno announced as he shocked a drone into submission, Rude nearby punching one into scraps.

“ No shit!” Rufus yelled, blasting another drone, the force of impact sending it back out the windows to explode on the tunnel walls. “ Run, for Gaia's sake, don't stand around!”

More running, more fighting, Cloud clubbing one out of the way, Rude popping the door open as Reno guarded his back, Elena and Rufus running interference with blazing guns while Tifa provided sorcerous assistance with lightning bolts. The most cramped of quarters, and drones pouring in, heedless of the innocent passengers who were getting hurt from either flying glass or the drones themselves; Tifa saw three people get shocked by accident as targeting systems miscalculated and picked innocent targets. She killed those drones, and only hoped the tasers were truly non-lethal; they didn't have time to give more help than that.

_Focus on what you can do, now._ Zangan's wisdom, ever-present in her mind.

The lockdowns came faster and faster, more and more drones, the high-pitched whine of their engines and the howl of the train barreling down the tracks combined with the sound of Rufus' clips being ejected from his gun-arm and Elena's inventive cursing as she fumbled her own reloads.

“ Gonna run out of cars before they run out of lockdown!” Reno yelled to Rufus as they neared the front.

“ Front car has an emergency exit door,” Rufus announced. “ We jump when we get to it!”

“ Leaping from a moving train? That's your plan?!?” Elena shouted as she ducked a taser swing, Cloud clobbering the drone a second later.

“ It's jump, or robots,” Tifa pointed out as she stomped the drone Cloud had knocked over, crushing it.

“ Point taken!” Elena announced as they crossed to the next car.

Two more cars of the most awkwardly close combat Tifa had ever been in- who knew a five year veteran could experience new combat situations?- and they were finally at the front. More panicked and hurt passengers, more drones; the only thing new was the conductor's door, blocked by an emergency seal, and a door next to it, securely locked with a control panel next to it.

“ Reno!” Rufus ordered, pointing with his hand at the panel as he blasted a drone with his other arm.

“ On it!” Reno said, running over. Thankfully, his skill at hacking was greater than that at making fake ID cards; the door soon popped open.

“ Drink a potion, then jump out!” Rufus ordered. “ Hopefully the healing will counteract the impact.”

“ Not much of a plan, boss!” Reno said.

“Not much of a choice!” Rufus said. “ I'll go first- if I live, follow me!”

He popped a potion open one-handed- impressive, Tifa noted distantly as she slugged a drone into scrap- downed it, chucked the bottle behind himself into the train's trash can with perfect aim, and with no hesitation whatsoever, hurled himself from the moving train.

He hit, _hard,_ rolling as he slammed into solid concrete... but he got back up, they saw behind them, wavering but staggering to his feet.

“ Okay, so it can be done,” Reno said, quickly draining a potion and chucking the empty bottle out a window. “ Shit. Well, hell, here goes!”

Out he went, to roll and stagger to his feet, same as his boss.

Rude, with only a single glance back, drank his potion, threw the bottle into the trash, and leapt out to a painful reunion with the ground outside.

“ Well, here goes,” Elena said, firing one last bullet at the gathered drones (and missing), downing her potion in a single go like a whiskey shot with her other hand. She threw it behind her and miserably missed the trash can, shattering her bottle all over the floor, to her obvious dismay.

“ Well, I- eh, fuck it,” she said, shaking her head and moving to the door. Right as she reached it and stood on the edge, she slipped, falling out of the door with all the grace of a log being hucked into a woodchipper.

“ **FUUUUUU-** ”

Down she went, not falling so much as divebombing... straight onto a tarp, spread out over some wooden crates of Shinra supplies that had been left in the tunnels after a construction project was canceled. The tarp and the crates broke her fall, and the potion took care of anything else.  
  


“ -cckkk?” she said quietly, realizing she hadn't even been hurt in the fall.

Then it was just Cloud and Tifa, screaming civilians, and a whole bunch of robot drones. The voice announced seven seconds to lockdown. Tifa drank her potion, as did Cloud, but right as he stepped to the edge he hesitated, like any normal man might in the face of a long fall at high speed.

_He's gonna get hurt_ , Tifa thought. _Just a grunt, not a Turk or a SOLDIER. This is beyond his experience._

An idea occurred, as the voice announced five seconds to go.

Tifa chucked her potion into the trash can so hard the bottle broke, and stepped behind Cloud.

“ I got you,” she said, wrapping her arms around him. This close, she could smell his sweat and his soap both- something honey-based, if she had to guess. She pressed tight against him, picking his shorter frame up, Cloud not a small man but Tifa having a good two or three inches on him; she wondered if he'd have been taller than her, if she hadn't been a SOLDIER, if her body hadn't been enhanced so much by Shinra.

Some part of her noted that he felt firm, smooth, a swimmer and a runner's physique; comfortably strong.

( _He feels good to hug_ , Old Tifa said with glee, as the New in her despaired. That crush was _ancient,_ it had died years ago... or so she'd thought.)

“ I- Tifa?!?” he squawked, but then Tifa was leaping, putting a twist in her step as she jumped, tucking him in close to her as they sailed out the door.

Out, out into the air, they were falling, falling together, weightless and free, Cloud warm against her, clinging onto his weapon case as they turned, Tifa tucking her chin in tight against his spiky blonde hair, shielding all of him with herself.

Then the moment ended, gravity and reality both reasserting themselves, as they slammed into the concrete. Tifa resisted the reflexive desire to roll with the forces assailing her, took the whole thing herself to preserve Cloud; her amor and flesh both protested her brain's decision. They actually skipped more than they skidded, hitting so hard they bounced on the concrete like a stone skipping on a lake, spinning horizontally as they went.

Their journey ended at a concrete pillar, hitting it sideways. It knocked all the breath out of Tifa in a heavy exhalation that blew Cloud's hair forward for a second, and they just laid there for a second, Tifa curled protectively around Cloud like an oyster around a pearl, body aching before the potion in her veins healed the bruised meat of her muscles.

Finally, she got her breath back, and asked Cloud in a shaky voice, “ Hey, you okay?”

“ Yeah, I'm fine,” he replied. “ Tifa- are you- are you okay?”

“ I'm good,” she said, belatedly uncurling from him, Cloud rolling off of her, as unhurt as Elena. He stood up, and reached a hand down to her.

“ I... Tifa... thank you,” he said. “ Sorry, I... I shouldn't have hesitated.”

“ Everyone's got something they're scared of,” she said. “ Besides, I'm a SOLDIER, 1st Class; I'll be fine.”

To prove her point, she kipped up, ignoring his outstretched hand. Her joints protested for a moment, but only a moment; between the potion and her natural healing, she was mostly recovered by the time she stood up.

“ See?” she said, as Cloud withdrew his hand.

“ You're incredible,” he said, gazing at her with adoration and admiration clear in his eyes, and Tifa felt warm blood rush to her cheeks.

_A blush_ , she thought, _an honest to goodness blush..._

_Are we a schoolgirl?!?_ some part of her complained.

“ Hey, glad you guys could- urgh- make it!”

Reno's voice cut through the rising tide of her emotions. She didn't want the others to see what felt private, and so with effort, she reasserted the cold. Cloud... Cloud was okay... but she wasn't going to give AVALANCHE any of her personal self.

“ We're fine,” Cloud called to them. The former Turks were in a group some distance away, Elena supporting Rude and Reno; Reno in particular was walking poorly. Must have twisted something on impact. Rufus was behind them, walking stiffly, like he'd hurt something, but the sheer power of the glare on his face was going to strip the paint off the walls.

“ Any injuries,” Rufus asked as the quartet hobbled up to their last two members.

“ No,” Tifa said, and Cloud shook his head too.

“ Good, because it's going to be the three of us for the rest of this trip,” Rufus said. “ Elena, take Reno and Rude and get back to base.”

“ Sir, I'm not that badly hurt,” Reno protested. Reno gently kicked his shin, Reno squealing in an undignified way.

“ You're hurt,” Rufus said gruffly. “ If the potion didn't fix it, cure won't either, not unless we use enough to risk giving you cancer, and esuna doesn't do anything for muscles. Go home, and get that checked out. Same to you, Rude. You're hurt worse than you're acting.”

Rude shrugged, embarrassed to admit weakness, but unable to contest the charge.

“ I'm totally fine,” Elena said. “ I can keep going, sir.”

“ I know,” Rufus said. “ That's why you're accompanying them; you're going to be getting into fights in these tunnels, and I'm trusting you to keep them alive. Get out, get home. If I'm not back in a week, assume I'm dead and carry out the plans I've prepared for that eventuality.”

“ I... be careful,” Elena said.

“ Yeah, be safe, okay?” Reno said.

“ I'll be fine,” Rufus said. “ I've got Cloud and Tifa with me.”

“ You're hurt, too, though,” Rude pointed out. Rufus shrugged.

“ Job needs doing,” he grunted out. “ _One_ of us has to stay. This is my responsibility. Reno, hand me the bomb. We'll finish this business.”

Reno handed it over, and Rude turned to Tifa.

“ I... would you take care of him?” Rude asked, stammering only a little. Crushes apparently just _destroyed_ him, and Tifa, still feeling a bit warm inside, found it rather cute.

“ I will,” she promised him, and without quite meaning to, gave him a smile. Rude looked away shyly.

“ Thank you.”

“ Hold still,” Rufus said, casting for a second, shields of protection forming in the air around his former Turks. “ Okay, that'll last for a bit. I should have cast it on the train, but didn't think of it at the time; something to consider for next time.”

“ No plan survives contact,” Cloud said, and Rufus nodded.

“ Just one more thing, then you need to go,” Rufus said. “ Reno, you've got that ice materia, right?”

Reno nodded, tapping his baton to the bracer on his left arm, and the gentle green glow there.

“ Good,” Rufus said. “ Keep it for the grashtrikes down here. They hate the cold.”

“ Got it, boss,” Reno said, with forced cheerfulness. “ See ya around!”

“ Be... be safe,” Elena said, and then the group turned, hobbling away. Rufus watched them a long moment before turning to his two remaining companions.

“ Okay,” he grunted, “ Let's get rolling. This is Plan B, which I didn't want to use, because of the monsters.”

“ I heard you mention grashtrikes- what are those?” Tifa asked.

“ Those,” Cloud said, pointing down the tunnel and into a side area.

Tifa looked. In an alcove of the train tunnel, which contained a blue door leading to what she presumed was a worker's area, there was a fat ball of thick, off-white webbing, sitting like a meaty zit next to the door. It twitched, and she saw the shadows of things moving inside, vague shapes both insectile and serpentine at the same time.

“ Grashtrikes, named after the guy who filed the first incident report on them,” Cloud said, as he took Masamune out of its case, the sacred silver shining in the artificial lighting of the tunnel. As a train roared by above them, he kept talking. “ Mutations of preying mantises made by the Mako Reactors. You know how most mutants are kind of malfunctioning, even as dangerous as they are, and they're almost all sterile?”

“ Yes,” Tifa said. Lucrecia had talked about that kind of thing at a couple of their dinners, especially when discussing her favorite topics, evolution and adaptation.

“ Well, grashtrikes are the exception that proves the rule. They're entirely functional and they breed true and _vigorously._ They also have almost every single trait you _don't_ want to see in a monster. They're big enough to eat people, they're poisonous, they can spit webs to immobilize their prey, they've got sharp claws, they attack in large packs- they're even fairly intelligent, about as smart as a somewhat stupid dog.”

“ ...Shit,” Tifa said. Rufus nodded.

“ They can't fly or swim, at least,” he said, “ but that's not gonna matter here. They're good climbers, so watch the walls.”

“ It gets worse,” Cloud said. “ They're getting hungry down here. See, Shinra lets mutants flood the tunnels- they mostly ignore the train tracks up above them- and the grashtrikes usually just eat those... but they're the dominant monsters down here now. They've eaten most of the rest.”

“ Evolution at her finest,” Tifa remarked. Lucrecia would have loved these things; she'd have sent her and Aerith to collect them for her, the way she'd sent them to collect a few samples of other species she liked.

( Tifa still remembered the _two months_ they'd spent tracking down juvenile dragons for her in her hometown's mountains. Pretty enjoyable, other than the constant danger; it'd been nice to be back home. Aerith had thought it a bit much, but Lucrecia had been enamored with the apex predators.)

“ I suppose,” Cloud said with a small grin. “ Anyway, they used to mostly avoid people, but now they're too hungry. They'll attack anything they meet. They've also got Queens- those nests? There's a big one in most of them, the mama of the rest- well, maybe the papa, nobody's really sure, they just get called Queens cause they're insects. She won't usually come out unless the nest itself is attacked or she's _really_ hungry.”

“ That's all true,” Rufus said, sounding a bit impressed as he popped a buckshot clip out of his gun and put another clip in, one decorated with a small strip of blue tape slapped to the side, beneath where the clip connected with the gun. “ Where'd you find all that out at? I heard it from my source in the Turks.”

“ Conversations with tunnel workers,” Cloud replied. “ Hardest job in Midgar; some of the biggest badasses I know are the tunnel engineers. Hard folk. They say ice for the bugs themselves, and fire for the nests. The silk is _extremely_ flammable. Usually kills the Queen if you're lucky.”

“ Good to know,” Tifa said. “ What'd you load your gun with, Rufus?”

He quirked an eyebrow at her. “ Made some new rounds out of the materia scraps Sector 7's been pulling out of the junkyard. Calling these Freeze Rounds- if they work, anyway. All ice materia chunks, mingled with iron to conduct. Should activate on impact.”

“ Let's hope it works,” Cloud said, tossing his case to the side. “ Reactor's not getting any closer; let's mosey.”

Rufus couldn't help the grin that broke out on his face.

“... _Mosey?_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Well, the START of the Reactor 5 mission.
> 
> Stay tuned!
> 
> A quick note on ages:
> 
> The timeline is five years farther along than it was in FFVII; we're actually at the time period of Advent Children in the original FFVII Compilation timeline. The major cause of this is the failure of the first Mako Reactor in Wutai, which set back Shinra's schemes and plans for half a decade until the Corel Reactor came online; while multiple other changes contributed to this five-year increase, they all date back to that original decision to stick a Reactor in Wutai and the fallout of that decision, both literal and figurative.
> 
> Cloud and Tifa's ages are thus five years farther along (Tifa is 25, Cloud 26). Their birth dates have not changed. Neither did Barret's or Aerith's; he's 40 at the time of this fic. Aerith, if she's alive, would be 27. 
> 
> Most believe she died at the age of 22. Tifa's official age at death in Shinra files is 20.
> 
> Sephiorth's birthdate didn't change, but due to PLOT, his age was arrested for a long time as a fetus; he is biologically and mentally... well, that's secret, but he thinks he's 27.
> 
> Rufus and Yuffie have drastically altered birthdates; President Shinra waited a few years to have a child due to the Wutai Reactor Incident, as did Godo Kisaragi. Rufus is 22. Yuffie, as she stated, is nineteen. They were born on the same day and in the same month, only the year has changed.
> 
> Rufus would be 30 if he had his original birthdate, Yuffie would be 21; President Shinra waited longer than Godo did.


	12. Three Billy Turks Gruff

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go- a chapter from Rude's perspective! What happened to the Turks, both current events and ancient history.

**Chapter 12**

**Three Billy Turks Gruff**

This wasn't the best mission Rude had ever been on.

He reflected on the past as he pulped another bug-serpent's head in his hands. There'd been some bad missions in the past. Search-and-destroy missions in Junon, going after the amphibious beasts that had slopped ashore into the town's wreckage, following in the wake of the Alpha-Leviathan that had destroyed the town. Deadly games of hide-and-seek in the Ancient Forest of the west, trying to find the Alliance's secret weapons facility, Ravens and engineered monsters hunting them in turn.

Wutai.

( Each breath half-poison even through the rebreather masks, a _weight_ in the air, like the dead were still there, watching, _judging_ ; the horrified look in Rufus' eyes as the mutated citizens attacked. The awful silence after the battle, on and on, the way Rufus had just... went away inside, all the ice of his soul cracking in the face of what he'd seen. Rude understood why; Rude, colder in the past than he was now, had still been horrified by all he'd seen, too.)

This wasn't quite as bad as any of those, but as a twinge in his back muscles reminded him, it wasn't great, either. They'd been walking for two hours, and had more to go. He rolled his shoulders, trying to ease his hurting muscles; the potion had recovered most of the damage, but it hadn't fixed everything. Shame he couldn't just down another potion, but you had to give your body time to recover after each bout of magical healing; it stretched your cells too far if you did it too often, warped them into cancer or other things. Supposed to be why mako poisoning and mutation happened in the first place- your body subjected to too much magic, too often, and too rapidly, though Rude wasn't a scientist and could only go off reports he'd read.

( At least they'd been reports from supposedly knowledge folks; Drs. Hollander and Valentine, and even a few ancient reports from Drs. Hojo and Gast, whom Rude had never met.)

Perversely, that had been one of the biggest benefits of the SOLDIER injections; they didn't get cancer, their cells resistant to mutation, so there was no need to rest between healings. Which was odd, because they were technically already mutants.

As these thoughts flickered through his head, Elena and Reno finished the last bugs. Elena ended hers with a burst of gunfire and a stream of curses, walking her shots up the mantiserpent's front; Reno hurled ice at the last grashtrike, a thin trail of gleaming white rocketing from his hand that chased the bug down to impact in its chest and burst open in a wave of icy spikes and cold, freezing the blood in the beast's veins and killing it instantly.

Reno paused, sighing as he tried to keep weight off his hurt leg.

“ Okay,” Reno admitted, “ this is less than ideal. I'm running dry, guys.”

“ I've got an ether,” Elena said. “ Nipped it from the crates I landed on.”

“ I'll take it.”

Elena walked to Reno, supporting him as she handed him a bottle of blue, artificially flavored restorative. Heidegger's big dumb grin on the label looked even sillier on the bottle when it was in the hands of one his enemies; a train roared past overhead, partially blocking the lights in a stuttering pattern, and giving Rude the unnerving impression that Heidegger was _winking_.

Turning away from that, he examined their situation. A small pack of grashtrikes, numbering six, were at a respectful distance from the trio, about fifty yards ahead. This group was playing it safe, hanging back, waiting to see what these very dangerous humans were going to do next. They had a nest nearby, sitting fat and heavy underneath the structural supports, wriggling- probably a Queen inside. So far they'd avoided harming the nests, so none of the Queens had bothered to come out and play; apparently they didn't care if a few minions died, so long as the nest was unharmed.

Otherwise, there wasn't much to see. It was a train tunnel, long and straight and not precisely full of interesting detours...

His eyes fell upon a blue door, set into a small crevice along the wall to his left, with a keypad next to it. Break Room- Employee's only, old paint testified from the door, misplaced apostrophe and everything.

Hmm. If the door was still shut, that probably meant the grashtrikes hadn't gotten in; might be a place to rest for a minute. They needed time, particularly Reno; time to let the potions filter out of their systems so they could down more (his muscle twinged on this thought, as if his aches agreed with him), and time for Reno to drink the ether slowly. You could drink an ether fast and get some of the effect, or drink it slow and let it really top you off, and Rude suspected they'd need a great deal of magic before today was over.

“ Reno,” Rude said, “ save the ether. You think you can hack the door to that break room?”

Reno followed his finger, then nodded. “ Sure,” he said. “ Doubt they update the security code down here very often.”

“ Then let's take a breather,” Rude said.

“ Hope there's no nest inside,” Elena muttered as she helped Reno walk over, Rude covering the rear. Their watchers moved forward as slowly and cautiously as the humans did, eventually congregating around the corpses of their fallen; as Rude watched, they started chewing on the dead, only dodging the one Reno had frozen.

Hmm. The grashtrikes really  _ were  _ starving if they were engaging in cannibalism; Rufus' information had stated they were unusually reticent about eating their own dead for insect-derived mutants, probably due to their high intelligence. A problem to watch; if it got bad enough, they'd start leaving the tunnels, hunting... and the closest meat was human. People would go missing in the night... It wouldn't be the first time monsters had moved in and the poor had suffered.

The door was reached without incident. Rude tried it, testing to see if it was still secure; it was. Good. That most likely meant no monsters inside.

“ I... I will be honest,” Reno said as he moved to the console with Elena's help. “ I will be super delighted not to be around these bugs. Seriously, I don't even like cockroaches. These guys, they're... they're just not doing me  _ any  _ favors.”

“ At least you've got bug spray,” Elena said, nodding towards his materia.

Reno grinned as he popped the door open. 

“ Knew it,” he said. “ Hadn't changed the codes since it was built. These bypass codes were old when I  _ started  _ being a Turk.”

Not that new bypass codes would have stopped Reno for long; Rufus had a source in the Turks that kept them up-to-date on the newest tricks. Rude had no idea who the source was, and understood why he couldn't know; the fewer people who knew a secret, the harder it was to find out. 

He knew his boss had contacts on the inside- at least one Shinra executive, and one Turk- but he had no idea who they were.

( At that very moment, both contacts were doing paperwork. Barret was filing the papers he'd prepared for Heidegger, slightly modified; meanwhile, a veteran Turk, codenamed Shuriken, was likewise filing papers she'd prepared for her boss, on a resistance fighter near Rocket Town, papers she, too, had slightly modified.)

“ I'll take point,” Rude said. “ Wait til I give the all-clear.”

The other two nodded, taking one last quick glance behind them- but the bugs were busy, either eating their fill or helping drag a few bodies back to their nest for their Queen. Rude opened the door, and as artificial lights vaguely flicked on, stepped inside.

The place was cramped and simple. A short stone-lined hallway, with a single door to the right midway down, a jukebox and a vending machine at its end. Both were caked with cobwebs- the tiny-spider kind, not the giant-bug-monster kind. The vending machine flickered to life as he watched, gamely trying to be appealing despite its rundown state, the logo of Banora White apple juice shining; the jukebox sitting next to it tried to turn on as well, but shorted out, having died at some point in its long disuse and finally croaking now when called upon.

Rude looked down the hall- and up above him- but there were no dangers here, not unless you tried to eat some of the no-doubt rotted food in the vending machine.

He went down the hall to the door, which was still securely shut, and popped it open, jumping back as he did so in case someone was waiting with a surprise on the other side... but as the lights popped on, it revealed a fairly barebones locker room. A toilet in one corner with a door to shut for privacy, long blue benches, a series of metal lockers, and little else. He entered the room and checked it quickly, but there was no danger here, either.

He returned to the front.

“ We're clear,” he said, and took Reno off of Elena's shoulders, helping his oldest friend hobble on in.

“ Heh, you know, they said you carried me through training, but I don't think they meant it so literally,” Reno said, laughing even as he winced when his leg came down.

“ Eh, somebody has to do it,” Rude said. That had been true ever since they'd met as kids, two middle-class youngsters; Reno would do something wild, and Rude would save him from himself. That dynamic hadn't changed, not when they'd become Turks, not when they'd become AVALANCHE; something that stayed the same, even as they and the world changed.

“ Thanks for it, though,” Reno said, before snorting. “ I must be hurt worse than I thought; I'm getting maudlin. Planet's tits.”

“ I... that's  _ stupid,  _ it's a  _ planet _ , it doesn't  _ have _ ...” Elena protested from behind him, so thrown off she couldn't entirely formulate a response, shutting the door and locking it to prevent sudden assault from bugs.

“ Elena, you know not to listen to any of the stupid shit I say,” Reno announced cheerfully. “ I clearly don't.”

“ Argh!”

Reno laughed as they entered the locker room, sighing as Rude set him down.

“ Thanks,” he said. “ Just need to stay off of it for a few minutes. All this walking's killing me, and it can't be great for you guys having to help my hobbled ass.”

“ It's not so bad,” Elena said. “ You talk less when you're in pain, so there's that.”

Reno giggled at that. 

“ Let's see if there's anything worthwhile here,” Rude said. “ We'll check the lockers, then let's bust the vending machine and check the jukebox too.”

“ Might as well make  _ some  _ gil,” Elena agreed, and the duo rummaged about as Reno got comfy. 

The lockers yielded nothing much of value; scattered clothes, two backpacks in good condition, a single saucy magazine, and about fifteen gil. The vending machine and the jukebox proved richer; the machine had fifty gil, while the jukebox's electronically-locked innards shorted out and popped open when Elena approached. A bevy of music records were hers for the taking, alongside about seventy gil.

“ Hey, these records are in good condition,” Elena said. “ Maybe worth something. We'll use one of the backpacks to store them- music always sells well.”

“ Your luck is useful,” Rude commented. Elena shrugged.

“ Just wish I could control it,” she said quietly, as she went to get a backpack.

Records in the backpack and gil in pockets, they returned to the locker room. Elena sat on the bench across from Reno, who was halfway through his ether at this point. Rude sat down next to Elena, letting Reno have a bench to himself so he could stretch out his aching leg.

“ Anything good?” he asked.

“ Some gil and some music records,” Elena said. “ Not much else.”

“ More than we had,” Rude said.

“ Optimism! A powerful force,” Reno said. “ I lack it, but then again, I'm hurt.”

He smirked. 

“ Heh, hurt on the job... familiar. Remember when I got laid up for six months?” he asked Rude.

“ I remember,” Rude replied.

“ When was this?” Elena asked.

“ Fourth year of the war,” Reno said. “ We ran into Fuhito- you know, the big scientist in the Western Alliance?”

“ Yeah, Lucrecia's rival,” Elena said. “ Least, that's how the news portrayed it.”

“ Close,” Rude replied, seeing Fuhito's face in his mind, that simple void in his eyes where most people had desires and preferences. Fuhito had been curiously... pure, in a terrifying kind of way, empty of the wants that fueled most people. “ He'd studied under Professor Hojo, who had been one of Lucrecia's rivals back when she was first starting out. Had a grudge; felt his teacher hadn't been properly appreciated for his efforts.”

“ I heard they'd been lovers,” Reno said. “ Don't know how much stock I put in that, though. Every time I ever met her, she clearly loved her husband, though not as much as he loved her. I don't think  _ anybody  _ loved anyone as hard as Vincent loved Lucrecia; he acts like the honeymoon never ended, and they've been married... what, thirty years now?”

“ Something like that,” Rude said, as his muscles twitched again. He was going to be hurting for  _ days _ from that fall.

“ What was this Hojo like?” Elena said. “ I've never heard of him, but if he was competing with Lucrecia, he must have been a genius.”

“ Eh,” Reno said. “ Don't know; that was before my time. I heard he was smart, but too unstable. He had some plan for a different strain of SOLDIER but nothing ever came of it; they went forward with Hollander's G Series, at least after Lucrecia fixed them.”

“ Lucrecia fixed the SOLDIERs?” Elena asked.

“ Heh,” Reno said. “ You know, you've been with us so long, I forget you missed most of the war. When did you even join? Feels like you've always been with us.”

“ Last year,” Elena said. “ Top of my class, got all the Elite Emblems of my year; and of course, my weird mako. Rufus recruited me straight from school because he thought my lucky streak would compensate for my lack of experience.”

“ So you weren't with us that long before Wutai,” Reno said. “ Damn.”

Elena nodded. Wutai had been a hell of a thing for a fresh recruit of seventeen to see.

( The dust, the wind, rebreather heavy on her face, heartbeat hard in her ears, the gun shaking in her hands, their faces, the hatred in their eyes, the sense of being watched)

“ Anyway,” Elena said, happy  _ not  _ to think about the Wasteland, “ Lucrecia fixed the SOLDIERs?”

“ Yeah,” Reno said. “ They were dying or something? This all happened before I got into the Turks, mind, it started as some rumor I heard. Anyway, apparently she did something to fix Hollander's sloppy work. It's why they hate each other; he never gave her proper credit. Hurt his pride too much.”

Elena nodded her head. “ Office politics at its finest.”

“ Yep,” Reno replied. “ Personally, can't figure out why he'd do that; Lucrecia's an immortal, or close, and so's her husband, why would you challenge someone like that? Just a bad idea.”

“ Agreed,” Elena said, “ but I think I got us off-topic. You said you were hurt?”

“ Yeah,” Reno said. “ We ran into Fuhito, and he almost killed us. For a scientist, Fuhito could  _ fight _ . He had mine and Rude's numbers, let me tell you. Rude's tougher than me so he got out okay, but I nearly lost- well, my leg, funny as that sounds considering our present circumstances. Same leg, too!”

“ It's your unlucky leg,” Elena opined with a grin, as Rude shook his head.

“ Reno's downplaying it,” he said. “ He saved my life, that's why he got hurt.”

Rude still remembered it- Fuhito, with his gun belching fireballs that melted steel, catching Rude dead to rights. 

He was a dead man, and knew it, up until a blur of red and a hard shoulder tackled him out of the way. Reno, saving his life, the red-haired man's momentum carrying him far enough out of direct danger that only his leg got hurt... but what a hurt it had been, the flesh had been burned nearly to the bone. Rude had grabbed him and run, Fuhito blasting away at them the entire time.

“ Aww,” Elena said. “ No wonder you bother to keep him around.”

Reno chuckled. “ I have my moments,” he admitted. “ Yeah, I was laid up five months. Bad wounds, but at least I was one of Vincent's favorites back then- good hospital, good service. Powerful alcohol.”

Elena grinned, and the three Turks sat there in silence for a few moments, just resting, Reno sipping his ether.

“ You ever wonder what the other Turks are doing?” Reno asked, apropos of nothing.

“ Just one,” Elena answered. Reno nodded, as did Rude; it was easy to guess who Elena meant. Her sister, Emma, the best sniper the Turks had ever had, five foot nothing and death with a gun in her hands.

Elena paused, then snorted. “ Well, two, I guess. I never did find out if Emma ever married Crisis. I suppose if they got married, then I'm curious about him, too, given he'd be my brother-in-law.”

“ Okay, I never knew them well, but was Crisis his actual name?” Reno asked. “ I thought it was a code.”

“ His codename was Rod,” Elena said. “ His actual name was, no shit, Crisis. He was a gang member, born to a prostitute who hadn't much cared about him; I think he actually chose his name himself when he was a kid. Emma was always talking about him in her letters; she was pretty smitten.”

( It'd always amused Elena that her sister, so dispassionately dangerous, had fallen in love so hard she left an impact crater.)

“ Quite a character,” Reno said. “ That whole group was, all of them. Our group didn't have anyone that weird.”

“ It had us,” Rude reminded him, and Reno laughed.

“ Shit, that's fair,” the redhead said. “ That's... that's actually pretty fair.”

“ I was the weird one in my class,” Elena said. “ I mean, not a lot of people get blood samples sent to Shinra personally.”

“ You're in good company,” Reno said.

Things were silent again, until Reno, who had never met a silence he liked, broke it once more.

“ I know a few are dead,” he said. “ Balto got ate by monsters. I was with Ruluf when the Ravens got him. I heard Knife got killed trying to avenge Balto- never knew her real name, just her code- I think Elfe killed her. Anyone know what happened to the rest of them?”

“ Why?” Elena asked. “ You've had five years to ponder this, you're just bringing it up now?”

Reno shrugged. “ Maybe jumping out of a train and seeing all these fucking bugs is making me ponder mortality. And, well, I'm curious, and there's nothing else to talk about.”

Elena shrugged, but racked her brain anyway.

“ Let's see... Freyra's alive, I know that much. She was good friends with my sister. She was the hunter, had a big shotgun, rich but not really an asshole about it?”

“ I remember her,” Rude said. “ We did three fairly short missions together while Reno was incapacitated- monster hunting, every time. Professional, skilled, competent. She worked well with my skillset.”

“ Ain't surprised,” Elena said. “ She was used to working with her girlfriend, Juget, and she was a martial artist like you. She got badly wounded in active service towards the war's end; she was part of the team that cornered the Alpha-Leviathan in that cave near Mideel. Lost a leg; honorable discharge. Juget applied for retirement at the same time, and it was granted given her good service. They got married; my sister was Freyra's best woman. They live somewhere on the Plate, last I heard- course, this was going on four years ago now. I think Freyra took up an executive's job once she hung up her Turk suit.”

“ Good for them,” Rude said.

“ As for everyone else... I don't know,” Elena admitted. “ I don't even know what my sister is doing.”

“ Who's left?” Reno asked, before answering his own question. “ Nunchaku- never knew his real name either- Maur, Tseng, and Cissnei... I think that's it.”

“ She was that Wutai woman who had the shurikens, right?” Elena asked, and Reno nodded. “I always liked her; she was good at watching out for the rest of us.”

“ She was,” Reno agreed. “ Cissnei took care of the rest of us, or at least tried to. Probably helped she was the deadliest of us. I never could beat her in training.”

“ Only Tseng ever got the better of her,” Rude said. “ And I only saw him beat her once.”

“ Wonder if he's alive,” Reno said.

Rude shook his head. “ He would have surfaced by now. Tseng was as loyal to Rufus as we are; he was with us at the Canyon, after all.”

The same memory flickering through all their skulls; it had been them, after all, alongside Tseng and Rufus' guard dog, who had been with the young man when he fell apart. Wandering for a time after Wutai, his shattered sense of self finally leading them to sneak into Cosmo Canyon- _Cosmo Canyon,_ the capital of the Western Alliance, the most heavily-defended location in all the world save Shinra Headquarters- on a mission they'd thought suicide even as he suggested it.

But he'd had to go. He had wanted to know what they knew, he was seeking answers that capitalism and greed could not give him, hoping to steal wisdom from the holy place's libraries. Rufus had felt such guilt it broke him, and they, helpless to do anything but serve, had followed along.

They'd almost immediately been caught, and by no less a personage than Elfe herself, alongside a pack of Ravens.

( But Bugenhagen had turned out to be a very different kind of man than they'd expected; a holy man, a healer, and wise. They spent two weeks in the Canyon as honored guests, not captive foes, Bugenhagen seeing in Rufus someone who might listen... and over long nights of talk, Rufus was reforged. All Shinra's horses and all Shinra's men, but the Canyon had put him back together again, and he left with new purpose.)

“ True,” Reno finally sighed. “ So he's dead. What about the last two? I didn't really know them.”

“ Nunchaku's alive, I think,” Elena said. “ At least, if he died, it wasn't before we left.”

“ I worked with Maur a few times while you were convalescing,” Rude said. “ He always struck me as a buffoon, too interested in flirting to focus. I believe I heard he died- rocket attack.”

“ Not that you'd know anything about crushes,” Reno said with a grin. “ Especially not on legendary SOLDIER types.”

“ I am a professional,” Rude said stiffly. “ I do not let emotions interfere with my efficiency.”

“ Don't pick on him, Reno,” Elena said. “ I think it's kind of sweet. Besides, Tifa's only got eyes for Cloud- you see the way she jumped out with him?”

Rude hadn't; he was too far back, and more focused on how his shoulder had tried to dislocate itself.

“ I hadn't,” Reno admitted. “ What'd she do?”

“ Curled up around him like a shell and jumped right off,” Elena said. “ Took the whole hit herself!”

Rude could not help the sinking feeling inside; it was just a crush, he barely knew the woman, but he had to admit... he'd... not so much thought they could have something, so much as maybe  _ hoped.  _

“ Elena, you're the one being rude now,” Reno admonished, seeing some minute change in Rude's stoicism and moving to defend his friend. “ That's a bit much to say in front of a guy.”

“ Oh, err, sorry, Rude,” Elena said.

Rude shook his head. He was a grown-ass man; he'd be fine.

“ It's just a crush,” he said. “ I'll be okay.”

“ I'll take ya out drinking,” Reno said. “ My treat. Find you some new woman!”

“ I'll go with you,” Elena said. “ So that you've actually got some chance at success. Reno's a shit wingman.”

“ Your weird-ass lucky mako doesn't help with dating,” Reno snarked. “ When was the last time _you_ had a date?”

“ Long enough ago that it's about time I get myself a new squeeze,” Elena said. “ And hey, none of us need any luck- we've got the most important skill of them all.”

“Oh?” Reno asked. “ And what would that be?”

“ We all look good in suits,” Elena said.

Reno laughed. “ Well, sounds like we've got our weekend planned. Let's go kill these damn bugs, then we'll get to the real hard work- getting Rude a woman! Might even meet some pretty thing of our own while we help him score.”

“ That's the spirit!” Elena said, rising up and clapping Rude on the back. “ Let's go, then!”

Rude nodded, rising up off the wall.

“ Another day, another mission; and what do Turks do?” Reno asked, rising painfully to his feet, but keeping a smile on.

“ We complete the mission,” Rude finished the old quote. “ No matter what.”

And out the door the trio marched.


	13. Jill, Tumbling Off the Hill

**Chapter 13**

**Jill, Tumbling off the Hill**

Traveling the tunnels was fairly basic work, from Tifa's perspective. Interesting, in how it was such an incredible symbol of Shinra as a whole- clean and amazing technology above them in the rail cars, filth and monsters underneath- but after five years at active war, with training involving hunting monsters with Zack beforehand, it wasn't much to hold Tifa's attention.

Not to knock the grashtrikes- they were certainly the most impressive accidental mutations she'd ever seen, they could compete with some of the deliberately crafted monsters Shinra made in their labs- but she was Tifa, SOLDIER 1st Class; and neither of her companions were pushovers, either. Rufus walked stiff-legged, having clearly hurt himself from the leap, but his shotgun and specialized shells meant nothing got close enough to capitalize on his injury; and Cloud...

Cloud was, surprisingly, a masterful swordsman, the boy who had been deemed unworthy of SOLDIER had become a man more skilled with a blade than most of the 3rd Class... and better than some of the 2nd. That the blade was so clearly of superior quality helped, but Cloud himself was the fulcrum on which that blade turned, and he did not disappoint. She'd feared she'd be spending most of her time defending him, having only seen him fight the dog-beast in the junkyard, but more exposure showed her he was a fine fighter; in his hands, the beautiful katana nearly sang.

It was just a shame his fighting style was so... familiar. Adapted for a weapon differently shaped, longer and lighter... but the swift pokes leading into big overhand chops, the focus on offense over defense, using the blade's size to keep opponent's back in lieu of a traditional shield...

Well, Tifa _had_ to recognize it. She'd been taught the same style of swordplay, by _two_ men, Angeal before he had disappeared, and then Zack.

( the feeling of his neck snapping in her hands)

...Those had been good days, and the memories flowed through her as the group slowly fought their way to the elevator. In that first year, before Angeal disappeared, he'd taught her his ways; the young Nibelheim girl had two masters in those days, Zangan and Angeal both, the two legends passing down their wisdom. She'd trained besides Zack, him Angeal's favored pupil, and she'd gotten Zangan to teach Zack too, the duo working out and working together, growing close, the sibling neither had ever had.

( Aerith had never trained with them; she had spent most of her time in her mother's lab. Tifa had always wondered about that.)

Her letters home to her father had been full of... of so many things, of stupid shit Zack had done she'd laughed about, of her growing friendship with Aerith, of Zangan's wisdom... and gushing, effusive praise for Angeal. Zangan she had known before, some of the lustre had worn off, but Angeal was a hero, he had  _posters!_ And he was teaching  _her!_ Running away from home had been the best idea she'd ever had- well, the best idea she'd ever  _stolen_ , technically it had all been Cloud's idea.

( She had tried to keep in touch, but she'd gotten so busy, and the world was so bright in those days that her star-studded eyes had been unable to see anything on this Planet, scales that had not fallen from her eyes until that day in Nibelheim, so long ago.)

...That wonder had not faded when he was taken, when whatever happened to him did, and he disappeared, leaving only the Buster Sword. Zack had taken it up, grieving, and then the War... the War had consumed everything else. No one knew what had happened to Angeal, save perhaps Zack, who had not given up the hunt, even as the fight with the West took prominence. 

Three years of war, just her and Aerith and Zack, the edge of Shinra's that made others bleed, training with each other and teaching each other, just as they had been taught. Aerith had never participated, waving off all attempts to learn anything different; she'd said she was content with magic, and with Shiva for backup if enemies got close... but she'd enjoyed watching them, eyes alight on Zack's fine form in his stripped down exercise gear, clearly liking what she was seeing.

( Tifa did not know this, but Zack had not been the  _only_ person Aerith was watching, in those halycon days of war, the happiest of Aerith's life.)

...How did Cloud know Zack's swordplay? There _had_ been a few periods, a few months each, where Zack was sent off on army detachments, the way Tifa had spent a few months with the Wutai Legion... had they met? There was so much of Cloud's life she did not know... what did he think of Zack? What had the war been like, for him?

She wanted to ask, she wanted to know, but... if she spoke about Zack...

( the feeling of his neck snapping in her hands)

Her throat closed up tight. There would be no conversation from her end.

Rufus and Cloud, though, apparently had no such ghosts between them, chatting between fights as they marched down the train tunnels, shoes clicking on the concrete floor as they followed the trail of artificial lighting and, bizarrely, Shinra graffiti.

“ How'd you decide on Stamp?” Cloud said, as they passed the little terrier in his army hat. “ And wasn't he a beagle?”

Tifa took a glance at the graffiti, remembering the times she'd done propaganda herself. Stamp had been more intended for the common grunts, not SOLDIER; Angeal had opposed any such “cutesy” propaganda, arguing that SOLDIER should project a more professional image. Shinra had agreed, and that was probably for the better.

Tifa kind of liked it, though, the same way she'd liked all the propaganda stuff. Besides, she liked dogs... though thinking of dogs made her think of her poor cat, abandoned when she left home with Cloud. He'd been a damn good kitty, too.

_Sorry, Mr. Punch_ , she thought. Dad had at least taken good care of him afterwards, and kept her up-to-date with her letters, before

( _the fire and the ice and the mistake_ )

...What had she been thinking about?

_Pull yourself together_ .

“ Two reasons,” Rufus said, briefly checking his shotgun, distracting Tifa from whatever was going on in her head. “ First, it's Shinra propaganda, so they're not expecting it to be used by AVALANCHE. Second, Stamp is a terribly _common_ choice for graffiti, so it doesn't stand out much. Also, yes, he was a beagle originally, but the terrier tested better after the war.”

“ Won't Shinra find it weird that people are doing graffiti down here, with, you know, monsters?” Cloud said. “ Speaking of which, I hope you paid the people who risked their lives doing this.”

Rufus chuckled.

“ Shinra doesn't pay that much attention to the tunnels... and the person I used needs no pay for this kind of work.”

( His mind flashed to her, briefly, the brave girl in Sector 5, the fancy-hatted merchant with the quick hands and the quicker mouth, who would do anything to avenge her grandmother's death. So many people his father's company had hurt, that his  _family_ had hurt, whom he did not enlist, but themselves volunteered. Brave folk who were willing to risk death for the cause, for  _his_ cause.  Just more debts to pay, more things he had to make right, more reasons to fight his father.)

Cloud shrugged at that answer before changing subjects. The grashtrikes had apparently figured out they were dangerous, and were staying back for now, leaving plenty of time for idle chatter.

“ So... what _are_ the plans for if you die?” Cloud asked. “ You mentioned them to the others, and I have to admit to being curious.”

Tifa was, too, and kept an ear out as she fiddled with her gloves, needing something for her hands to do when they weren't committing violence. The scrap metal contraptions were falling apart... she'd need new ones, soon. Maybe the weaponsmith in Sector 7 could make good on his promise to provide equipment...

“ I'd rather not say,” Rufus replied. “ After all, I'm still alive, and I'm sure it's bad luck to talk about things that will only happen if you die. That sounds like a reasonable superstitition.”

“ I mean, death comes for everybody, whether we talk about it or not,” Cloud said. “ Everybody dies.”

“ Really? I was unaware,” Rufus deadpanned. “ I thought I'd live forever. Quite a shock.”

Cloud snorted before continuing.

“ My apologies, I hate breaking it to you, but I thought you should know,” Cloud responded.

“ I shall deal with this existential crisis as best I can,” Rufus answered. “ But regardless... fearsome as the reaper is, he's not striking me down today.”

“ Death's a woman out west,” Cloud said. “ Lady Jenny, a'come out of the north, riding on the cold winds to snatch away old folk and children and anyone else who catches her fancy. Also, she doesn't have a sickle, but a sword, because she's cooler than your Grim Reaper is. He's just a renegade farmer in some cloak three sizes too big, never understood how you guys found that terrifying.”

Rufus barked a laugh at that, even the stoic man warmer around Cloud.

“ What's Lady Jenny look like?” Rufus asked. “ Some old crone, I bet.”

“ Still got that Eastern mindset,” Cloud teased. “ No, she's young. Beautiful, even. Tempting. Out West, we know that death's easier than life; just let go of all your burdens and come to Lady Jenny's kingdom. They say she takes other forms, though, she's not always just some hot young thing; she looks like people you know, takes their forms, to tempt you to join her.”

“ Sounds like what the Wutai think,” Rufus said, before pausing and taking aim with his literal firearm. “ Hold on, that grashtrike is debating an attack.”

It was, too- staring at them, mandibles twitching, tail shaking in imitation of a rattlesnake's- but, eventually, it decided not to, perhaps smelling the blood of its kin spattered on their clothes and deciding on valor's better part, slithering back into its nest.

Danger averted, Cloud resumed the conversation, though the trio all kept watch on the grashtrike's home as they passed it.

“ I'm not surprised,” Cloud said. “ Nobody thinks about it, because we associate them so strongly with Shinra nowadays, but Wutai is from the Western Continent. More remote and removed... but we share a culture with them, they're Westerners.”

“ So that's why they have a Jenny,” Rufus muttered. “ Or I think they do- I heard a song, once.”

The duo fell quiet at that, leaving Tifa to her thoughts. A song... her father had sang songs about old Jenny, too. She could hear one now, in his drunken slur.

_As I walked out one morn in May,_

_The birds did sing and the lambs did play;_

_The sun was high and the wind was gay_

_And I met a young woman by the way._

_And Jenny said_

_My name is Death, cannot you see?_

_Ladies, Lords, and Dukes bow down to me._

_And others than those branches three_

_And you my lad must come with me._

_And Jenny said..._

There were other lyrics, but he never finished them, too incoherent with drink to continue. That had been one of his favorite songs to sing, when he was drinking, in those horrible days after her mother's death; like so many others before him, he had sought solace in the bottom of a bottle, and like those before him, he had found only despair and disaster in the last sip.

Still, despite that, Tifa didn't have the usual stories that accompanied the daughters of drunk men. Her father drank to ease his pain, not to enrage his temper... not that it ever worked. Drunk, he just fell further into grief, his resolve cut down by the booze. Her father was not a bad man, just a sad and ruined one, having lost the girl he loved far too early to Lady Jenny.

And if it hadn't been for Cloud, Lady Jenny would have taken his daughter, too. She barely recalled it, but she knew she had slipped out one night while her father was drunk, seeking Lady Jenny, hoping to ask her for her mother back... Cloud had followed, and saved her life when she fell from an old broken bridge, though both were hurt in the process.

Her father had blamed him, as had the village, no matter what Tifa said, the one injustice the man had ever committed. No wonder Cloud had been so eager to leave...

She glanced at him, fair face, fair smile, fair with people... perhaps she shouldn't be surprised he'd turned out to be such a good man. Even as a child, he'd tried to save her life, and she'd never forgotten that.

( The warmth she felt when she looked at him, the knowledge he'd saved her, guilt for his ostracization for his act of heroism... there had been many ingredients to the cocktail that drove Tifa to follow Cloud across the sea, even if she herself had never quite parsed it out.)

“ Is that the elevator?” Cloud asked. Tifa pulled her gaze from him to look down the hallway they'd turned down, an old ruined thing with a single fat grashtrike nest built on the ruins of an old crab mecha from the war, and a set of heavy-duty freight elevators, run-down and disused, a dull green light blinking over them the only indication they worked.

Rufus pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, unfolding it with one hand- _neat trick,_ Tifa thought- and gave it a look before nodding, double-checking the route his scout had marked with the map.

“ This is it,” he declared. “ Now, before we go up there- my contact in Shinra gave me some details. There's a trap waiting for us.”

“ That... that means we shouldn't go up there,” Cloud said, furrowing his brow. “ Right?”

“ Not necessarily,” Tifa said, her throat unclenched by her memories of Cloud. “ If you know a trap is there, you can make sure it backfires.”

“ Precisely,” Rufus said. “ It's the real reason I brought you along, SOLDIER. I still don't believe you're the real Lockheart... but you're good enough.”

“ Thanks,” Tifa said dryly. Cloud rolled his eyes.

“ I know, Rufus, I've heard it before,” he said. “ Trust me, she's 100% authentic, original-brand Tifa.”

“ Now I have the mental image of a can of soup with that label on it,” Rufus grunted. “ Thank you, Mr. Strife.”

“ You're welcome,” the chef said. Rufus did not dignify that with a response, turning to Tifa.

“ Regardless of who you are, you are an excellent asset and a very competent fighter. That will be invaluable in the next few minutes. The trap they hope to spring is an ambush at the Reactor's core, broadcast live; the idea is that we will either die to their new war machine, called the Airbuster, or we escape, in which case we will be recognizable due to our faces being plastered on every TV screen in Midgar, and we will be hunted down in short order. Our partner at Shinra will take care of the broadcast so we are not identified; _we_ will be dealing with the techno-soldier. We kill it, plant the bomb, and run.”

“ Sounds similar to last time,” Tifa said. “ Except we _know_ there's a robot at the end of it. What do we know about what it's capable of?”

“ Got a whole list,” Rufus answered. “ Tall robot, carries a bomb launcher, lasers in the fingers, guns in the back, it can fly, and, of course, it could always just punch us with fists as big as we are.”

“ That all sounds... horrible,” Cloud said.

“ It is, but we've got two aces up our sleeves,” the blonde replied to his fellow blonde. “ First is our very own SOLDIER here... and my contact in Shinra sabotaged the robot. The bomb launcher doesn't work and it's missing some of its armor paneling on the back. We get behind it, we hit it with lightning. That's _your_ job, Tifa.”

“ Consider it done,” Tifa said, glancing over at the crab mecha. One of Scarlet's old toys... and soon she'd be fighting a new one. She'd went to war alongside machines like this once... it would be weird to fight them now...

“ We have one other thing,” Cloud replied, interrupting her thoughts. “ I've got Ifrit's materia here.”

“ Ifrit?” Rufus said. “ When did you get- I thought Reno had that.”

“ He gave it to me as payment for assisting with his midnight mission,” Tifa responded, before remembering that Reno hadn't wanted his boss to know about that. Oh well; too late now. “ I gave it to Cloud.”

“ I wondered how he convinced you to go along,” AVALANCHE's leader said. “ Though why he thought he'd keep it secret from _me_ , I haven't the faintest idea. I'm just glad the summon materia is back in our hands now. The materia's worth far more than just one mission, but Reno never had much of a sense for money... and too much of one for drama.”

Tifa shrugged non-committally.

_One bullet dodged._

“ If you've had it,” Cloud said, “ why haven't you used it?”

“ Didn't want Shinra to know I had it,” Rufus said, “ plus, summons take a lot out of you. Using it too often can be dangerous for your health, unless you're _very_ good with magic. As long as you stagger it out, that's fine, but... well. I didn't want it to turn into a crutch, because eventually it'd kill me. Same goes for you, Cloud; be careful with that.”

Tifa nodded; Aerith had told her much the same about her own summon, though Shiva was obviously no real burden on _Aerith._

“ Still, it sounds like now's not a bad time to break it out...” Cloud said.

“ No, it isn't,” Rufus agreed. “ But- if you can- wait to see how we handle this thing. Airbuster might not be so bad. Though according to my source, Heidegger is piloting it, which I don't much like.”

“ Heidegger?” Tifa said. More sound from her memory- his booming horse laugh, echoing over battlefields, loud and obnoxious as he wailed away on the enemy with his warhammer, leading from the front.

“ You know him?” Cloud asked. “ He never came to my part of the front; I served under General Coates.”

“ You were one of the units under Turn-Coates?” Rufus said. “ That must have been terrible, what with him stealing all your supplies.”

“ It was,” Cloud said. “ Working under the biggest black-market dealer of the war meant we spent the entire war short of... everything. Until Zack caught him, anyway; I was there for that, actually. Zack had me guard the door. My proudest moment.”

That narrowed it down; Colonel Coates had been caught early during the fourth year of the war. That had been Zack's last solo mission before he'd... left.

(his bones in her hands under his fine muscles her _friend_ she'd murdered her _friend_ )

“ Really?” Rufus said. Cloud nodded.

“ He's the guy who taught me to fight,” the pub owner replied. Rufus chuckled.

“ For some nobody from Nibelheim, you sure know a lot of important people, Cloud,” Rufus said.

( He counted himself among them; Rufus had not lost _all_ his pride.)

The chef nodded after a moment, grinning, as Tifa focused on not focusing, on forgetting the past.

“ Guess I do... though it looks like I'm going to be adding a Queen to that list. Look.”

Tifa, grateful for the distraction, followed his pointing finger. Apparently they'd overstayed their welcome; the nest, drooping fat and full from the subway wall like a zit, split open, disgorging a horde of grashtrikes and, surprisingly, with a heavy thud, a great slug of a best, standing twice as tall as the others, gnashing drooling mandibles that dripped with unspat webbing. She slid down the dismantled crab mecha, eager and hungry.

“ That's the Queen, alright,” Rufus said, as the grashtrikes made ready to rush them. “ Must have stood here too long, they decided to attack. Shame. Alright, let's handle this, then I'll go over more about the Airbuster and Heidegger later...”

“ They probably haven't eaten much- this tunnel's kind of out of the way,” Cloud said as he drew his blade from its long sheath, Masamune's blade shining silver in the artificial white light. A train passed over in that moment, and the shadows flickering over the blade's watery surface resembled great sea serpents at play, leviathans bounding and coiling cheerfully with one another on the keen edge.

“ SOLDIER, can you kill the Queen while we take out the little ones?” Rufus said, aiming his shotgun.

Tifa let a snort of amusement past her lips- that was the kind of thing a mercenary did.

( Right? She was stumbling, pretending to be this cold thing... but warmth had hurt her so badly, she had trusted so much and it had all broken in her hands, broken like Zack's neck and-)

“ I used to hunt dragons and capture them alive,” she said, forcefully tugging herself out of her head, hoping her voice betrayed none of her thoughts. “ I can take it.”

“ She's got this,” Cloud said, tossing her a smile. “ She's Tifa Lockheart. She's got it.”

...That look, from him, and she'd just been thinking about the boy who'd saved her... no wonder she'd crossed the ocean for him. That dangerous warmth, again...

...And an urge, an urge she had not felt in years, an urge to... show off.

...Why not?

“ In fact,” Tifa said, decision made, stretching her legs quickly as the little grashtrikes slithered forth in a serpentine charge, “ since you're paying so much... both of you stay back. I'll take them.”

“ That's reckless,” Rufus began, but Tifa was already moving, running, faster than most humans could manage, enhanced muscles pumping. In her head were Zangan's words, mingling with Angeal's and, later, Zack's, the trio who, jointly, had taught her how to fight, even as she had taught the last in turn.

_Monsters are animals,_ Zangan had said. _Animals generally do not stand and fight like humans do. Once you've hurt them enough, their instincts will lead them to run... though that is a general statement. Some, like boars or dragons, are made of sterner stuff._

The horde of smaller grashtrikes met her, and regretted it almost immediately. She hurled lightning into the frontrunner, and while his exoskeleton smoked, she leapt over his head, landing hard and heavy in the midst of them, hands and feet already moving even as she landed. Sickle arms broke, spines were broken, heads and eyes cracked.

_Against a group, keep moving,_ Angeal said, the honorable man's words ringing in her head. _Even an ox can be taken down by ten piranha if he stays in the river. Move. We don't have these big-ass leg muscles just to look cool; run in and out, keep them guessing where you are. Hell, jump, if you can. We can't fly, but jumping's close!_

Out again, before they recovered, jumping out, onto the wall and running along it; not necessary, but showboating was a thing of drama, not practicality. She risked a glance- he was looking, she saw Rufus seeing her with a look of irritated surprise but her eyes were on Cloud's, watching her, admiring her the way ancient soldiers venerated their war gods.

_Heh, Cloud watching_ , she punned inside her head, and barely suppressed a grin. What the hell Claudia was thinking, naming him that... then again, that woman had named her first dog Bark, and Cloud had named his first cat Kitty. Perhaps naming was simply not a family talent.

Along the wall, defying gravity with her strength, flipping off the wall once she was in position to attack the grashtrike horde from a new angle. Back into the fray, the poor monsters totally incapable of dealing with her; she killed one with her landing alone, stomping it with both feet, and was killing the others around it before they could process that she'd even landed. Hunger lost to the survival instinct in the remainder; grashtrikes were smart, after all, and they knew the battle was lost. They ran, slithering away at random, as Tifa's strength broke them like porcelain dolls.

The Queen, though, was made of that sterner stuff Zangan had warned her about. She stormed forward, trying to crush her with sheer bulk, Tifa dancing away from her. With crushing having failed, the beast responded by lashing out with her scythes, Tifa cartwheeling away as sharp bone spikes dug holes in the concrete where she had been standing.

Trying to catch the damned prey-thing, the Queen made a noise like an engine breaking down, and spat a heaping gob of webbing from her mouth at Tifa; it missed, Tifa leaping when she heard the noise, even if she didn't know what it was. The mass stuck harmlessly on a wall as Tifa landed behind the Queen, on the old busted mecha-

_Wait, idea,_ she thought. The mech was mostly complete, but one of the weapon-bearing claws had fallen off over the years. Those were heavy, but not _so_ heavy she couldn't lift it... she should know, she'd dead-lifted one on a drunken dare once.

_Lift, Tifa!_ she remembered Zack yelling, all the SOLDIER 1st Class gathered, even Genesis' mopey ass smiling at the goofball antics of an entire group of drunk superhumans. A happy memory, one of many she'd had with him, tainted by the last second they'd shared.

_Focus, Tifa_. This stunt would take concentration... but it'd be so _impressive_ , and she had to admit, she liked showing off for Cloud.

As the Queen turned, Tifa grabbed the claw, bending her knees and lifting, hoisting it over her head. The Queen made that engine-crunching sound again, but it didn't matter; Tifa was throwing even as the Queen finally got a bead on her.

The throw was dead-on, crushing the Queen's skull, the claw killing her before it fell off to the ground with a great clatter. The Queen's body thrashed, but that was just nerves firing one last time; soon, she slumped, laying still, what was left of her mouth wide open at Tifa.

She turned to Rufus and Cloud, putting on her best cocky grin.

Cloud recovered first, entranced. “ Tifa, that was-”

“ Reckless as _hell_ ,” Rufus snapped, irritated. “ I couldn't even shoot into the crowd for fear I'd plug you!”

“ It's not like you needed to!” Cloud responded, and Tifa's cocky grin threatened to turn into a shy smile, it felt so _nice_ to have Cloud praise her strength so much, she... she _liked_ this...

“ Employees should not risk themselves unduly,” Rufus snorted in irritation. “ Even contract workers.”

Tifa's response was cut off by the dead Queen. Even as she opened her mouth, the body of the Queen gave a particularly hard jerk, and the corpse's movement caused her to finish expelling the last blast of webbing, which she'd prepared right before Tifa killed her.

Tifa happened to be in front of her when this happened.

Before Tifa knew what was happening, something wet and slimy smacked her in the back of the legs, and she was suddenly splayed to the floor, squished like a bug under a couple dozen pounds of gooey webbing. It coated her legs completely, and a stray bit had stuck her left hand to the floor too, the overall effect pushing her cheeks together and giving her an expression not unlike a particularly stupid duck.

After a long moment, Cloud asked, nonplussed, “ Are you okay?”

“ 'Hno,” she said, face pressed too close to speak properly. Her right hand flailed to find a grip on the webbing, and she only managed to stick her hand to her own shin.

Rufus stepped closer and hunkered down on his haunches next to her.

“ This is the Planet giving you a warning, you know,” he said, a light edge of amusement coloring his otherwise stern words. “ You should heed it.”

Tifa tried to flip him off, but her hands were too stuck, so she settled on trying to glare at him.

“ Would you like to lay there for a while, or would you prefer I release you?” Rufus asked, still with that light lilt of mockery in his voice.

Tifa debated asking him to just leave her there, but then sighed in defeat.

“ Pwease,” Tifa said with a sigh.

_So much for looking cool, Tifa; stick with practical in the future,_ her mercenary side warned her, and she could do nothing but admit defeat.

-

In the elevator, Tifa shook herself clean of ashes as she took up door watch, Cloud and Rufus behind her. Rufus had set the webbing on fire to free her, citing it as the only way to get rid of all of it; it had worked better than she'd have expected, the webbing blazing up so quick that it hadn't really hurt her. Flammable apparently didn't even cover it, the strands and goo blazing up almost invisibly with a small blue flame.

She'd been burned a little, of course, but her enhanced flesh had healed the small scorched patches on her skin, and she was fine, though she had the _worst_ singed ends in her hair now. She fiddled with her long ponytail as the elevator went up, only pausing when she felt the tingle of Rufus' protective magic wash over her, flashing tortoise-shell patterns, symbols of nature's little tanks.

She couldn't suppress a look at him, and he simply shrugged.

“ If you're going to go haring off,” he said, “ You'll need the help. I'm not wasting my investment in you.”

_Bit of a change from the last mission_ , Tifa thought, New running ahead with her cold analysis. _Then again, we're all he's got to make sure this works. Just practical._

...Still, she couldn't help but feel a little touched, silly as it was.

“ So what's Heidegger like?” Cloud asked.

“ I didn't deal with him that often,” Tifa said. “ He was regular army, we were special forces. I actually knew Scarlet better; she was always asking us to test one of her toys, and she was close with Lucrecia. I actually had dinner with her a few times, when Aerith invited me over. With Heidegger I've had maybe a dozen conversations, almost all of them about the war. He talked to Zack and Aeris more than he did to me, though I _did_ fight alongside him a few times.”

“ He any good?” Cloud asked as the elevator slowly hauled them up to the reactor's basement, old gears turning despite their age and lack of maintenance. “ It's been five years since the war, and he'll be piloting a war machine, but if he decides to get out I'd like to know how he fights. I heard he uses a warhammer?”

“ He does,” Tifa said. “ And he's... good. Very good. Angeal actually suggested him as a SOLDIER candidate, if I recall; though I think part of that was Angeal thinking he could temper him. He'd always complained that Heidegger was _too_ violent.”

“ His actual training was as a vehicle pilot,” Rufus said, “ but he had leadership qualities, and his loyalty to my father was unquestionable, so he went up the ranks quickly. It's brute-force leadership, but it works. He's got guts, I'll give him that; I've never known him to back down from a fight. _Retreat_ is a four-letter word to him.”

“ Not the best tactician, then,” Cloud snarked, and Rufus nodded.

“ No, and he got a lot of men killed... but he also won a lot of victories, simply through staying power. If we fight him, we'll have to kill him to win.”

“ I'm not fond of killing... but I knew what I was signing up for,” Cloud said.

Rufus nodded. “ He likes big frontal assaults and heavy armor- and he's a lot tougher than you'd think. Wields a warhammer, and favors lightning magic and shields; usually he armors himself up, hurls lightning at everyone in front of him, then rushes in. But still, I imagine the giant robot will take up most of our attention.”

The elevator doors dinged at that moment, and as they opened, Rufus sighed.

“ No talking,” he said to them quietly. “ Not til the show starts.”

The elevator stopped, opening on a... surprisingly empty room. No guards. The base defense machines slept in their charging cradles, doing nothing; the guns dangling from the ceiling made no move to fire or even track them.

Only the cameras moved, green lights almost winking at them as they followed AVALANCHE's progress, up the stairs, deeper and deeper into the facility. Quiet reigned, and Tifa's nerves stretched, her sense of time distorting as she waited for violence to begin. The wait was always the worst part, they'd all agreed on that; different as the 1st Class was, they'd all agreed that the wait was the worst part.

The wait stretched out, each step loud as a thunderclap in the still air, finally finding themselves on a catwalk above Midgar, above a fall far enough that even Tifa wouldn't survive it. This far above at night, Sector 5 was just a blackness, with vage images in the shadow suggesting buildings, dreaming in the dark.

As Tifa looked down- and as Rufus visibly struggled _not_ to look, because even AVALANCHE's unflappable leader had things that disturbed him- the silence was finally broken, as a pack of drones flew down from above with their unmistakable engine's buzzing. The doors on either end of the metal walk they were on slammed shut, trapping them.

The group fell into a fighting formation, but the drones did not attack, instead forming a square and projecting- an image? President Shinra's face, glowing green in the hologram's light, stood huge as a giant above them.

“ Rufus, son, isn't it time you ended this charade?”

“ Father,” Rufus said. “ I see you're looking well.”

“ And you are not,” Shinra said, gazing at Rufus' disfigured arm. “ We could do better prosthetic work than _that_. Why not come home, son?”

“ You tried to kill me last time,” the former Shinra executive snarled. “ Remember? You sicced _Vincent_ on me! Your little attack dog's the one who did this to me!”

“ Only because you tried to destroy my company,” the President said calmly. “ Your ideas would have ruined us, and for what? The... _Planet_? That silly old spiritualism.”

He chuckled softly. “ Come now, son, I raised you better than that. I'm willing to consider your arm as fair payment for your misdeeds. I'll even extend some unwarranted benevolence; your little servants can leave too. Give them severance pay out of your salary, should you feel any... moral obligations to them. Return, and carry out my legacy, as you were meant to do.”

“ Your legacy...” Rufus said, then shook his head. “ Father, I've _lived_ among your legacy for half a decade now. Your legacy will not be that shining tower, it won't be that museum you've built to yourself, and it won't be this company. It'll be mutants and crippled children and slum-dwellers, their souls sucked out by your Reactors. It'll be a dying world, and everyone- _everyone-_ will know you are at fault. History will not judge you kindly. If you want to preserve a legacy, father... stop this. Turn it around. You've got power, and wealth. You can change this.”

His words were threaded with a thin thing that, in another man, Tifa might have called _pleading_... but Rufus did not _plead_. He was too busy acting superior...

But as she glanced at him, she saw that while his body was still ready for a fight, his face had softened, just a little.

( Even now, some part of Rufus hoped against hope that his father would listen to reason- as so many children of monsters do.)

Whatever it was Tifa was hearing in Rufus' voice, Shinra heard it too- and _hated_ it, his face twisted into a grimace.

“ You're as weak as your stupid brother!” he snarled. “ Lazard went with Zack, but I thought you had more _sense_!”

“ We both had more sense than you're showing,” Rufus said. “ You've read the same reports that Reeve wrote, you _know_ the harm we're causing!”

Shinra snorted in contempt. “ General Heidegger, kill my son's companions. Perhaps he feels the need to put on a show in front of them; remove the obstacles.”

“ **Delighted to!** ” came a booming voice from a speaker above them. Tremendous engines roared, and from on high a great robot descended, shaped like a human torso, attached to a disk at the bottom that served as a platform for the flames that let it fly. The head, baring a single light, glared cycloptically at them.

“ So much for diplomacy,” Rufus muttered, as he opened fire, blasting away at the machine as it descended, heavy slugs pinging off the metal.

“ **But before we get into the meat of things- Lockhart! Of all the people to see alive and well. Shouldn't you be dead?** ” Heidegger's voice asked from the great machine's speakers, a pair of spotlights flickering on and focusing on her. “ **Or are you some look-alike Rufus has cobbled together for PR? That sounds like the kind of plan the former leader of the Turks would come up with.** ”

Tifa held up a hand to defend herself from the glare, even as she charged the lightning materia in her gauntlet.

“ You'll find I'm the real deal,” Tifa said, then lashed out at the spotlights with crackling thunder, blowing up both.

“ **Ooh! Nasty!** ” Heidegger laughed. “ **We better start recording, Scarlet, we've apparently got a guest star on tonight!** ”

“ I didn't know you had such a head for show business,” came Scarlet's dry, amused voice over the Reactor's loudspeakers. “ Let's see... we're beginning to record in three... two... one...”

“ **AVALANCHE! Your reign of terror ends here!** ” Heidegger announced dramatically, flaring the Airbuster's engines in a way that probably looked pretty good on camera. “ **Surrender, and stop this bombing!** ”

Rufus kept firing, and Tifa hurled another lightning bolt, though this one simply flickered harmlessly over the robot's front, drawn to a pair of square boxes on the chest that were, if she recalled her military training correctly, shock-asborbing lightning rods, built specifically to protect Shinra mecha from hostile electrical magic. Expensive to make, but apparently they'd decided this robot was worth it.

If it'd just come down, she could get at the back, where Rufus' mystery supporter had weakened it...

Cloud, who had no real way to assault it at range, stuck with Rufus, the swirl of healing magic around his fingers, ready to assist anyone who was hurt, though his eyes kept glancing at the bright red materia on his bracer.

“ **If you do not surrender, I will have no choice but to defend myself!** ” Heidegger announced.

“ You're in a giant robot, and you're going to claim _self defense?_ ” Cloud yelled at the general.

“ **Defense of myself- and of all Midgar!** ” Heidegger yelled, raising the machine's hands- and then there was light.

Lasers, small ones, leaving warm red trails on the catwalk's metal, which made Tifa's stomach lurch as she sidestepped away from the initial blast- they weren't cutting through the metal but they _were_ making her very aware of how little it would take to destroy the platform they were standing on, and send them all plummeting to their deaths. They did _not_ need this fight to drag out long enough for Heidegger to have the exact same thought.

She ran to her compatriots as the lasers continued covering the platform, Rufus' protective shell of magic bouncing the blasts off for now, sliding the last little distance to where Rufus and Cloud had taken cover behind a convenient computer bank, which was slowly being carved up by the lasers... but it held, for now.

“ We need him to come down,” Tifa said. “ His front's protected from my lightning.”

“ And my gun's doing fuck-all,” Rufus grunted, more emotional than Tifa had ever seen him. Apparently the altercation with his father had thrown him off his stride.

“ Shame he won't fight us on the ground,” Cloud said.

“ Why the hell would he do that when he can just fly out of our range?” Rufus grunted, annoyed. “ Anyone have any ideas?”

“ Just Ifrit,” Cloud said. Rufus nodded.

“ Hope you're ready for a horrible day tomorrow,” Rufus said. “ But... unless the SOLDIER has any ideas-”

“ None,” Tifa said. The catwalk was over almost entirely empty air, there was almost no way to get up _to_ the Airbuster. For all Heidegger's dramatic proclamations, he wasn't defending himself; he was shooting fish in a barrel. Tifa _might_ have been able to run up the walls and leap onto the machine, but if she missed, she'd fall and die; too much risk to be worth it unless they had no choice.

“ Ifrit it is, then,” he said. “ SOLDIER, run to the other side of the catwalk, draw Heidegger's attention. Cloud, on my signal, summon Ifrit. Tough as that thing is, I bet Ifrit can hurl fireballs enough to knock it down. Let's see if we can't attack him from both sides- Tifa, when the Airbuster turns to fight the summon, let loose with all the lightning you've got on its back.”

Tifa and Cloud nodded.

“ Sounds like a plan,” he said, which was when Scarlet's voice over the loudspeakers crackled in.

“ Heidegger, something's wrong with the cameras, they're not transmitting. I'm looking into it, but it looks like your big TV special has been canceled.”

“ **Shame!** ” Heidegger announced jovially. “ **Still, if the camera's off, I suppose I don't have to keep playing with them, do I?** ”

“ No,” Scarlet said. “ President Shinra gave me your orders before leaving; he was in quite a poor mood when he learned the cameras were malfunctioning. Simply kill them, won't you? Leave Rufus alive, but take out his compatriots- though if you could get me the Tifa copycat's body, I'd owe you a favor.”

“ **Excellent!** ” Heidegger announced, and his horse laugh mingled with Scarlet's cackle over the loudspeakers as a sound like a gear shifting emanated from the machine.

Tifa didn't know what that meant but she knew it wasn't _good_ , so out of cover she leapt, hurling lightning, running down the catwalk. Whatever he was about to do, she could make him do it somewhere other than on top of Rufus and Cloud.

“ Leave your robot and fight me, you coward!” she yelled. Heidegger struck her as the type to get offended by that kind of comment; maybe she'd strike a nerve, make him angry and stupid.

“ **Now, now, what kind of idiot do you think I am?** ” Heidegger laughed, dashing her hopes. “ **If you're the real Tifa, then I think I need a** _ **bigger**_ **robot, and if you're not, you deserve to be squashed like an insect for copying a war hero!** ”

A great fat cannon on the beast's shoulder swirled towards her, and with a roar, shot a massive bomb, straight at her. Tifa dodged as fast as she could, but the explosion that would come out of _that_ bomb was going to hit everything in the room- and probably the next one, too. She threw her arms over her face, waiting for the blast...

Which never came. When she peeked, she saw the heavy iron casing of the bomb, buried in the catwalk, having punched through the metal and gotten caught halfway like an egg in a net. It wasn't exploding.

“ **What the hell?** ” Heidegger growled. “ **Scarlet, your damn bomb's not going off!** ”

“ What- that shouldn't be happening,” came Scarlet's voice, now tinged with anger.

“ **I'm well aware,** ” Heidegger responded.

“ Discount the Big Bomb launcher for now,” Scarlet said. “ I'm reviewing to see _why_ it has failed- looks like an electrical system problem- it's not getting enough power. _Someone's_ going to pay for this oversight.”

( Barret, listening in on the fight in secret, grinned to himself. The power swapping a few numbers around could do- it could get the wrong electrical wiring in a bomb, for one thing.)

“ **Ah, well,** ” Heidegger said. “ **If you're Tifa, you always preferred fists anyway, right?** ”

The hands of the Airbuster rocketed off, chasing Tifa, who barely ducked in time, surprised by their sudden detachment.

“ **So let's have some fisticuffs! Albeit mine are bigger.** ”

The great hands attacked Tifa in a parody of fly-swatting, great mechanical fists slapping away at her; she rolled away from them, hurling lightning that the fists absorbed. How much money had they spent on this machine, that even its hands had shock absorbers? No wonder Rufus' contact in Shinra had put effort into weakening the beast; this was superior to anything they'd used during the War. A mechanical hand tried to grab and crush her and she dodged, throwing a haymaker, shattering one great robotic finger with her strength.

_One less laser, at least_ , she thought, right before she had to roll out of the way of a slamming hand that rattled the catwalk and would have squashed her flat.

Heidegger, focused on commanding the fists from the Airbuster's cockpit, had taken his eyes off the other end of the room, too focused on Tifa; Rufus took his chance. Tifa saw, from the corner of her eye, the leader of AVALANCHE turn to Cloud, and somehow, underneath the sounds of the whirring machine hands trying to destroy her, she heard Cloud's incantation, said with the reverence of a prayer.

“ Ifrit, Fire of the World... help us.”

Between the robot's fingers and between attacks, she saw a a great blazing circle open before Cloud, a door huge and tall, a gateway to some impossible inferno whose very visage made Tifa's soul recoil.

( _the fire and the ice and the mistake_ )

She turned away from it, focusing on the hands Heidegger was still attacking her with, until she heard heavy footsteps ringing on the catwalk and caught a glimpse of Ifrit.

The glimpse was enough; she paused, caught, and could only stare, a sentiment Heidegger apparently shared, for the fists stopped moving at the same time, both combatants overawed for the moment.

Ifrit was tall, taller than Tifa had ever seen the beast's form; taller, and less animalistic. This Ifrit still bore his horns and his furred legs, still had his inhuman size and split hooves, but he was less demon and more satyr, he seemed more... _human._ He had a bizarre regality to his nature, despite his bestial attributes; his fur was clean, his horns smooth, his hooves polished. Delicate jewelry was hung about all these things, little things of gold and bronze and beautiful rubies, all signs of sapience, all crafted things made by wise hands.

From the waist up, rising above those great hooved feet that slammed into the walkway and left smoking hoofprints, he was a man with skin the color of deeply burnished bronze, great muscles rippling with power. He had hands, not claws, but he was not bereft of a weapon; he wore a scabbard on his back, a great thing of cooling magma that held a sword whose design was terribly familiar to everyone present. More gold was draped all over that handsome bronze, armlets and necklaces and earrings, ending in a great ruby-tipped crown on his brow that was both between and a part of his horns; an ancient king, this, the kind of primal image that might have been worshiped around the first campfires, when human beings first began to become something more than cave-dwelling primates.

No demon or devil was this thing, but some primordial god, from when humanity was still half-wild, and their divinities shared in that nature; a savage deity, not quite human, but not quite _in_ human, either, instead partaking of the best aspects of both. A kind of comforting heat blazed forth from his red eyes and his great orange mane of hair, wrapping around Cloud's friends as the summon's presence warped the local Lifestream towards fire.

( Meanwhile, aboard the Airbuster, Heidegger's displays hit maximum on heat recordings and unsafe temperature gauges suddenly tilted to the red zone, the mechanical equivalent of screaming panic.)

But Tifa barely noticed the heat. She saw only his face- his face, which provoked such a strong wave of shock and _fear_ inside her that she stopped dead. Heidegger recognized it, too, and the Airbuster paused a moment in its attacks as its driver gawked in surprise; Cloud, meanwhile, merely gave a sad smile as he looked on the form his summon had taken. Only Rufus was unaffected... after all, he'd never met the man whose face Ifrit was wearing.

Bearing the visage of Zack, Ifrit strode forth, pulling from a scabbard of cooling magma on his back an obsidian copy of the Buster Sword.

“ **Is that... Ifrit?!?** ” Heidegger asked, though of who, nobody was sure.

The summon responded by taking the sword in his hand and swinging, hard, at one of the hands targeting Tifa, shattering the fist into a million pieces.

“ **Ah, shit!** ” Heidegger cursed, as the other fist came alive again, dodging away from Ifrit.

“ Heidegger, retreat,” Scarlet said. “ If they've got Ifrit, the Airbuster will be outmatched; especially because I've found some other concerning information. _Apparently_ my subordinates made multiple mistakes and deviations from my original design. The Airbuster is not as strong as it should be.”

“ **Nonsense, woman!** ” Heidegger said with his horrible laugh. “ **I've never retreated before... and I'm not starting now. This old dog's still got a few new tricks, and I've never fought a summon before!** ”

“ I... what?” Scarlet said, sounding nonplussed.

The other fist tackled Ifrit, punching the summon in the face; as it did so, the Airbuster opened up with onboard guns, though the firearms, perhaps appropriately, did little to the fire summon. Ifrit shook off the dazing blow and swung the sword, but the flying hand dodged, punching him again in return.

But if Heidegger was looking at Ifrit, he wasn't looking at Tifa...

She leapt at the hand as it flew back from hitting Ifrit, latching onto the fist, and grabbed the blocky square of its shock absorber. She pulled, mutant strength against metallic resilience, and proved the stronger; she tugged it out, removing it entirely and throwing it into the pit over which they fought. She leapt back off, aiming as she did so, lightning rocketing through the great hand and shorting out all of its systems; it fell, dead and useless, to the catwalk's floor.

“ **You might actually be Tifa,** ” Heidegger mused. “ **I thought Luxiere was just hallucinating from the concussion... but he might have been right. How are you alive, Lockhart, and why are you fighting us?** ”

She didn't bother to dignify that with a response. Banter in combat was too much like the old her.

Ifrit had a response, though; the summon grabbed the fallen hand and hurled it at Airbuster. The machine dodged with a jump jet on its side, juking left, the hand slapping a far wall before falling to Midgar below.

_I hope that doesn't hit anyone,_ Tifa thought distractedly, as Ifrit threw fireballs that Airbuster kept dodging.

“ **Okay... firearms and lasers don't work well on fire... hmm. Well, Scarlet's gonna give me hell for the beating the robot's about to take, but desperate times call for desperate measures!** ”

The robot leaned over, aiming at Ifrit, and the jets flared as Tifa realized what he was going to do.

_If he tackles Ifrit off the catwalk we're back at square one,_ she thought. She didn't know what other weapons Airbuster might have, but it would have all the time in the world to rain death on them from above if it took out Ifrit...

But if he got close enough to hit Ifrit, he would be close enough for her to...

She moved, as Airbuster charged forward, the limbless robot slamming into Ifrit. Ifrit grabbed on, but Airbuster kept going, tearing the railings off the catwalk, the plan obvious- slam Ifrit into the walls until it let go.

Tifa jumped just as the techno-soldier passed her, and landed, heavy and hard, on Airbuster's back, clinging on with both hands as sheer wind pressure tried to blow her off the back. Her feet stood on the disk at the Airbuster's base, and it was so _hot_ , her damn boots were going to melt to the thing's base from the backwash of the blazing jets alone. Ifrit, growling, held on with one great hand of its own, as Heidegger's laughter rang in their ears, the trio slamming hard into the Reactor's far wall. Ifrit grunted in pain as they impacted, and Tifa was almost thrown off the machine, rocked back and forth. Airbuster flipped, her stomach tossing, _holy hell_ , she'd never been a fan of heights, and all she could see was the fall dangling beneath her.

Then they were off again, rocketing towards the other end of the room, to slam Ifrit into the wall again, to do it until Ifrit died and they lost.

_I'm not going to be killed by fucking_ _ **Heidegger**_ , Tifa thought, steeling her determination.

( Another thought, softer- _I won't let him kill Cloud._ New and Old, once again, speaking in unison, her dual tongues, of two minds about everything.)

The back was a weak spot, Rufus had claimed; but she was sitting on the beast, if she fired lightning at it, she'd be hit too.

...Wouldn't be the first time she'd gotten hurt, killing an enemy.

A thought, to the thunder in her gauntlet, as they impacted once again, Tifa steeled for it, Ifrit keeping its grip but clearly getting more dazed, Heidegger still laughing as the storm gathered in Tifa's fists, that thrumming hum that didn't feel quite right in her hands. Something else was supposed to be there- but she didn't have time to parse out that thought now, she only had time to mentally hope Rufus' fading shielding would save her from the worst of what she was about to do to herself.

She gripped Airbuster twice, and then they were both riding the lightning.

It flickered through them both, and Tifa's jaw clenched so tight she thought her teeth would burst. Pain, pain, so overwhelming she barely felt it, nerves overloaded- electricity dancing up and down her, the energy she generated as cheerful about killing its creator as it was about ruining her target. Her hands, gripping the metal, jerked tight, and in its own way it helped; she had such a death grip on the machine now that she could not _possibly_ let go.

Death grip was, perhaps, appropriate; her grip brought death indeed. The Airbuster's metal screamed as the shock absorbers on the back, built wrong, did nothing to disperse the deadly energy, the thunder racing down circuitry and wires to burst into gremlin delight amidst vital systems. Heidegger's laughter ended and his screams began as the thunder got into the cockpit, screaming as his skin fried. Only Ifrit was left relatively unharmed, lightning kin to fire, and even the great beast felt the sting of Tifa's magic; kin did not mean _safe_.

The Airbuster's jets flickered as the circuits controlling them fried, and while backup fuel cells, whose shock absorbers had worked propertly, activated to keep it afloat for a while, they were weaker than the main jets that had been slamming them into the walls. Tifa, half-blistered by her own power, saved only by the now-degraded shield Rufus had provided her, stopped powering her materia, slumping boneless and nerveless against the Airbuster's back.

Ifrit, with the opportunity it now had, sank its great sword deep into the gap between the torso of the Airbuster and the disc that held its jets, and even as the thing's emergency power activated, used the blade as a lever, separating it into two great chunks. An emergency escape hatch fired out the top of the Airbuster as the machine died and gravity reasserted itself, the trio falling.

Tifa could not move to save herself, nerves jerking and twitching; but she did not have to. As they fell, a great warm hand circled her, and she looked up to see the face of a man she had killed, right before Ifrit threw her to safety on the catwalk.

_Zack..._

She landed, heavy and hard, Ifrit dissipating into the ether with his work finished, Airbuster falling far to Sector 5 below. Her vision was blackened and she _hurt_ , the pain everywhere in her body... but then there was warmth, and the taste of good Nibelheim cooking in her mouth, heavy spices and the hearty flavors of her mountain home.

She blinked once, twice, three times, and then her eyes were full of Cloud's worried face, kneeling next to her, his hand on the cure materia in his bracer. It was his magic flowing over her, healing her, restoring her from her wounds.

“ Tifa! Are you okay?” he asked. She gave him a smile as the burning pain sank down, crooked, before turning her head and spitting burned blood out of her mouth, feeling her throat repair itself with the energy Cloud was providing her.

“ Never better,” she said. Her limbs were still shaking, but when she tried to stand up, she managed it. Cloud rose up too, as shaky as she was; summoning Ifrit, and then healing her, must have nearly wiped him out.

Rufus shook his head as he looked at her.

“ I... well,” he said, “ at least you're worth the money I spent. Do you need more healing?”

“ Wouldn't mind it,” she said, and Rufus tossed a potion at her, which she nearly fumbled, fingers still only half-responsive. She _hated_ getting hit with electricity. She remembered one time that Red XIII had missed with a lightning bolt, and got her instead of the Raven he'd been fighting...

Whatever else she was to reminisce about was interrupted as the ejected cockpit of the Airbuster landing on the far end of the steel pathway, rattling the already badly abused factory floor. It popped open, and Heidegger staggered out, beard smoking, tossing aside a bottle, scars and burns on his face healing even as he spoke. He had a warhammer in his right hand, one with two green materia embedded, and a backpack on over heavy armor.

Tifa squinted at that backpack. Wait, that _wasn't_ a backpack...

“ Well!” he announced. “ That was... incredible! You really are Tifa. Shame you're on the wrong side.”

“ Give it up, Heidegger,” Rufus said, striding forward to stand next to Cloud and Tifa, drawing his gun on the man. Part of Tifa wondered if it counted as _drawing_ your gun when your gun was you arm, but she told that part to hush up. “ Surrender, and you can live.”

“ A warrior dies, he does not surrender,” Heidegger said. “ But it's a bit premature for all that. After all, I had an idea while Tifa was frying me!”

Lightning from the materia in his hammer glowed.

“Scarlet said that big bomb was missing power, right?”

Rufus fired, but Heidegger was already moving, lightning lashing out from his hammer- not at Rufus, but at the bomb still embedded in the catwalk. Rufus' slug hit Heidegger center of mass, but the armor absorbed it.

The bomb absorbed Heidegger's attack, too- and exploded.   
  


The blast wasn't nearly as big as it should have been, Heidegger only able to jumpstart part of its mechanisms with his jury-rigged attempt at electrical engineering; but it was enough. The metal walkway, so heavily abused in this batttle, could take no more; it finally gave up the ghost and collapsed, throwing all the combatants to Midgar below.

Heidegger, ready, laughed as he fell, _gyahahaha_ all around them as he leapt clear of the rubble, pulling the string on the backpack, which was really a parachute. He was sailing free and clear, Tifa saw as she fell...

Near her, trying in vain to grab something, Rufus and Cloud, falling.

She wasn't dead yet. Zangan's words echoed in her ears, the words that had saved Tifa's life in every emergency so far, _Focus on what you can do, now._

With shaking arms and legs that only half worked, she leapt off a nearby piece of stone to Rufus and Cloud, and grabbed both men. She moved to jump, but her legs wouldn't obey her, she was still so weak; she couldn't... she couldn't jump to safety.

But the men she was holding onto...

She made her decisions in a split-second. She turned, turned hard as she could with her stumbling flesh, turned and with what was left of her strength, hurled Rufus and Cloud towards the open doorway, the closed door damaged in the explosion and dangling open. Her hammer toss, clumsy as it was, got both men to safety.

She saw them go into the door like basketballs sinking into a hoop, and then tried to follow herself; maybe with less weight, she could make it.

She leapt. Her hand reached out.

Her fingertips brushed the concrete bottom of the doorway before gravity reasserted itself, and she fell. Her last sight, before she began to spin at terminal velocity, was of Cloud and Rufus, crawled back to the doorway, and she felt the backwash of Rufus' magic as he tried to shield her.

No shield of magic in all the world would save her from what was to come; she spun as she fell, saw the world as a hallucinating kaleidoscope of feverish visions. Heidegger, sailing away on a great parachute, still laughing a laugh she could not hear, the wind taking away everything but the roar of her fall. A vision of Rufus, shooting helplessly at Heidegger, trying to kill the man who had killed her. Midgar, growing under her, bigger by the second.

She hurtled to the ground, falling so fast she would puke but that the pressure on her kept her stomach down. She fell between the Plate and the slums, and didn't htat fit? A metaphor for all her life, to serve as her death. Her mind whirled; she was still thinking, this was the worst death imaginable, she knew it was coming and had seconds to contemplate it. She spun, falling, twisting, turning, the wind took any scream she might have made; breathless, she fell, down, towards... a church?

And in the second before impact, she felt the writhing thing under her skin move, and a voice she knew screamed in her mind.

_Tifa! No! Not again!_

She impacted, and knew no more... for a time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're back...
> 
> Next time: We catch up with a guy in a hospital... and after that...
> 
> Sephiroth.
> 
> Stay tuned.


	14. One Last Lesson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We meet a surprise guest- Luxiere! Let's sit and chat a bit, shall we?

**Chapter 14**

**One Last Lesson**

Luxiere sat in his hospital bed, and he thought.

Not like he had anything else to do. He was alive, but barely; Sensei- no,  _Tifa_ had pummeled him senseless. He'd more or less expected that outcome, which was why he'd told his troops to assist; he knew better than to think that he could take on Tifa Lockhart alone. 

But with his troops and Cobalt, though... yeah, he could win those odds. He would keep her occupied, Cobalt would wear her down with sneak attacks, and his troops would both keep healing and supporting him while shooting Tifa to further wear down her titanic defenses. He'd actually fought alongside Tifa; he knew just how powerful she was, and he'd judged that, with sufficient help, he  _might_ be able to take her out.

Then the lights went off, and Tifa was among them, alongside her friends charging in out of the dark; in the face of such an assault, discipline had broken down, and it had gotten him hurt, and a lot of his people killed.

... _ Cobalt. _ That blonde with Tifa had killed him, gunned him down... when he recovered, he'd have to go to Director Nanaki, ask what he should do for last rites. Cobalt wasn't a friend- Luxiere didn't call anyone a friend- but he'd been a decent partner; he should... do something for him. And maybe for the men he'd lost, too.

_ You didn't do anything for Zack _ , his mind retorted, and an old feeling he had long dismissed reared up in his mind, tasting like the acid of heartburn and vomit. He didn't remember the name for it. Was this guilt? Or shame? He hadn't had either in a long time, couldn't differentiate between them now.  _ Something  _ ugly and hurtful, at any rate.

He should turn on the TV, focus on something else... which meant the TV, because there was nothing else in his private room. He  _ had  _ a private room, a bit of a boon given how Shinra usually built its hospitals, with efficiency and volume in mind rather than patient comfort. A sterile white room, no window for fear of assassins, a gurney so he could be wheeled about, the low hum of electricity and the lights dimmed this late at night, that was Luxiere's world right now. 

Still, it wasn't all bad. He was one of the few 2 nd Class SOLDIERs Shinra still had with experience from the War; he was entitled to a few goodies. His caretakers were some of Dr. Valentine's best doctors, and they'd even offered to bring in Dr. Hollander if his condition worsened- no one knew more about G-Type SOLDIERs save Lucrecia herself. He got an extra pillow if he wanted, a TV, privacy, and very powerful painkillers, strong enough even his mutant healing couldn't purge them before they had their effect.

_ The high life _ , he thought, the sardonic man amused by the idea. 

He'd been too busy hurting at first to note the passage of time, but now that his head was clearer, he found he was... bored.  _ Really  _ bored. His world was just this dark place, undimmed only when a doctor came in to check on him. 

There'd been some excitement earlier this night,  something about another bombing, lot of interns and nurses and doctors rushing about and chatting in the hallway outside... but he hadn't heard much of it, hadn't  _ wanted  _ to hear much of it.

After all, if it was an AVALANCHE bombing- and who else would it be?- Tifa would be there... and he didn't want to think about her right now.  _ Click! _ went the remote in his hand.

First channel.

Shinra's History Channel, and as was usual for the programme, it was showing a War documentary. This one was focused on mecha development and the shining star of Shinra's techno-soldier division, Scarlet, who had... apparently been a lounge singer, beforehand? What she'd done to pay for college, the documentary claimed, and it seemed she'd been good enough to release an album that was now a collector's item worth a chunk of gil. 

Huh, he'd never have guessed. Weird.

(  _ Did  _ explain the fondness for low-cut dresses though.)

But hard pass; he knew the machines better than they did, he'd fought alongside them, and he'd met Scarlet personally. Which was a terrible thing to do; he could hear her laugh now.  _ Kyahahaha! _ Like an old crone in a theater play, the woman  _ cackled _ , what the hell? It was worse when her and Heidegger got together. Thank Shinra that Heidegger and Scarlet had no romantic interest in one another; if those two beasts in human form mated, the baby would be born making a laugh so awful it would kill those who heard it.

Next channel.

Midgar Local, a Shinra station devoted to local news, sports, and events... when it was active. This late at night it was just doing re-runs, and old ones at that; the documentary that was just now starting came back from over a decade ago. Some shitty, generic Wutai roller played as some asshole trying to sound profound began listing off urban legends that had been old when the War ended.

The Leviathan Summon in the Wutai Wasteland, accompanied by a goofy drawing of what a “corrupted” summon would look like; the Ghost Lady of the Train Graveyard, accompanied by a rather better drawing of an ethereal woman with long brown hair, one green eye, and a long red dress with a purple sash; constant rumors of some lost civilization up north, destroyed in prehistory, whose relics were being found all over the world.

Just the usual shit people had been yelling about before they found newer, stranger urban legends, and forgot these old things. Old boring shit, and not even old boring shit he hadn't heard before.

Pass.

Next channel.

Shinra Aerospace Live, showing a launch from Rocket Town to the Grimoire Valentine Space Station, Shinra's favorite project since the War ended. Twin reporters announced it with delight, glad to see it finally done, commenting on the constant air battles the local Shinra forces had been waging with a local terrorist. Lux was aware of _that_ particular situation; there'd been talk of sending him and his unit out there, before they got reassigned to that information center.

( He'd have to recruit, before they went out west; replacing those he'd lost...)

The matter seemed fairly simple to him. Some rogue pilot in a surprisingly advanced plane kept doing strafing runs on the rocket launches, trying to stop them, damaging equipment and sometimes killing Shinra soldiers. A plane meant it had a runway, meant it had access to fuel, ammo, and parts; Luxiere would just grab some locals, torture them until they talked, and find the pilot that way. They never _had_ kicked all the rebellion out of the traitorous Rocket Town, and he suspected all the locals knew who flew that plane. He'd find the pilot and put them to death, and that was it.

Before they died, though, he'd ask them a single question; why had they named their plane _Goddamned Tea?_ That was just weird. Did they just think it was funny to watch the reporters try _not_ to say the plane's name on Shinra's TV broadcasts? Did it have some deep meaning? He hoped it wasn't like Genesis and that damn poem.

Pushing practical thoughts aside, he watched the rocket go up. Despite the situation, despite himself, he felt a little bit of awe- they were going to  _ space!  _ Of all Shinra's works... this one was beautiful. 

Then the rocket was gone, and it got less interesting. The reporters were apologizing for Palmer not being present to give his traditional space launch speech, the Head having returned to Midgar to deal with the AVALANCHE crisis.

Luxiere didn't know what the Head of Space was going to do about a terrorist group in Midgar, but points to him for coming home during a disaster, he supposed? Luxiere had dealt with Palmer quite a bit, mostly defending various things that were being transported to Rocket Town for delivery to the Space Station or the planned Moonbase, though he hadn't been able to even  _ guess  _ what some of it was meant to be.

( That job two years ago, what was it, that they had transported from Lucrecia's personal labs, why had he had so many strange dreams while they hauled that frozen thing, why had his fellow SOLDIER on that trip killed himself? And where the  _ hell _ was its head?)

Those thoughts were uncomfortable... he didn't like thinking of that job, because even if nothing had happened on it, no gunfire, no fighting... still he had been left unsettled, and feeling like he had brushed up against some great wrong.

_You do a lot of wrong for Shinra_ , a voice like Tifa's whispered in his head.

“ Fuck off,” he told it out loud, pressing the remote a bit harder than necessary.

Next channel.

One of the approved independent channels, Wutai Roller!, playing live footage of a charity concert going on in New Wutai tonight, all proceeds to go to Midgar to help with the Reactor situation. Ten-Faced Mountain was up, their lead singer and guitarist, Sasame, blazing her way through the last guitar solo of her hit single, _Volcanic Area,_ the world's least likely love song, comparing tender feelings to bubbling volcanoes in the sea.

Still, it worked, and he listened as she nailed it, finishing with a flourish. She looked up in the sudden silence, flushed with exertion... and after a beat the crowd broke into wild and ecstatic cheers, throwing fists in the air and clapping for all their worth.

Her bandmates gathered around her, and the young girls bowed and smiled, a smile Luxiere knew well- the sweet smile of victory, the same on a pack of young girls' faces as it was on an old soldier. Sometimes, you just knew you'd done it, and the smile made him think of hard-fought victories, grinning at those who'd survived, grinning like idiots and the cat who'd licked the cream all at once.

He'd loved those moments, and blessed the kids for having such a moment for their own. Just kids, but they'd written an award-winning album of songs, including the number one single they'd just finished. Hell, Sasame was just fifteen, and he'd heard she was the real brains of the bunch.

_When I was fifteen, I wasn't the brains of_ _any_ _bunch,_ he thought, fond of his own past stupidities. He'd just been a regular dumbass teenager, fleeing a broken home, lucky enough to be compatible with SOLDIER. He still remembered his first meeting with his officers, slipping into the memories as Ten-Faced Mountain launched into their encore single, a roller rendition of New Wutai's national anthem, _Wutai Remade_ , a guaranteed crowd-pleaser when the crowd to be pleased was mostly the very Wutai who had Remade their homeland on the boens of Costa del Sol.

( Though everybody slipped up and called it Costa del Sol at times.)

His eyes stayed on the band, but he saw only the dark grey walls and metal lockers of those barracks, so long ago, the gunmetal gray of metal storage broken up only by equally functional, plain beds and dark grey footlockers. Luxiere had been standing there sweating and nervous, still half-sick from the treatments, so queasy and weak that he'd almost passed out... but he'd clung on until the steel doors at the other end of the concrete construction opened, and... in they walked.

Past the distance of time and the weight of the painkillers in his veins, he saw it, exactly as it had been. The artificial light had been harsh, and the resulting glare had carved their outlines into the world; they stood out, they seemed more real than anyone else there, like gods among worshippers.

Zack, face strong and set without being stern,everyone's friend and leader; Aerith, who had been something like a preacher, her eyes forever set on some horizon no one else could see. The glint of gold on their left hands, their upcoming wedding the reason they had _both_ been appointed to take Angeal's place.

( That, and rumor insisted that no one person, not even Zack, could truly replace Angeal, who even in the earliest days after his disappearance had begun to take on messianic overtones.)

Tifa, behind both of her commanding officers, though neither would ever have presumed to command Tifa; the three had been friends before two of them were officers, and Tifa might as _well_ have been part of the double command, given how they both listened to her. She was with them, as she always was, friend and bodyguard both, alongside Red XIII. Tifa stood behind Zack, Red behind Aerith; and while the cat took up watch with the easy lounge of his kind, Tifa had stood at parade rest behind her friends, watching for threats even in such a safe situation.

Her face had been calm, her scanning eyes at ease; she had known that whatever trouble came, she could handle it, not the arrogance of the untried but the calm assurance of those who had been tested and not found wanting.

He'd known from the moment he saw her that he would never meet anyone like her again. In her stance, in her muscles, in her casual vigilance and competence, he had gotten his first glimpse at real _strength,_ and he had decided then and there that he wanted to be like her.

Zack had given a rousing speech encouraging them to bravery and honor, and Aerith had followed up with a sermon exhorting them to help unite the world and pave the way forward for progress... but Tifa, without saying a single word, was the one who won him over completely. In her did he see his future.

When he'd heard she was teaching her martial arts to anyone interested, he'd volunteered on the spot.

Those had been... wonderful times. Very disjointed, this training; her schedule sometimes loose enough to accommodate lots of training, sometimes too tight. The War ebbed and flowed like that. But whenever she could, she taught, and Luxiere never missed one of her training sessions if he could help it.

Hard work. Tifa pushed them as far as they could go, never relented, drove them to their considerable limits.

Incredible work. Tifa had a knack for helping them _break_ those limits, grow exponentially in skill and strength, give them a better chance to survive than other SOLDIERs, particularly as the Western Alliance's desperation drove it to commit ever-stronger monsters to the fight. Tifa's training had saved Luxiere, and he was not alone in that.

They had been some of the best days of his life.

( When she praised him for mastering his blocks, it had been his proudest moment, prouder even than when he woke up in the SOLDIER tanks to Dr. Hollander's little grin and a quiet “congratulations” from the slovenly man.)

But... for all her talent physically, mentally he'd always considered her a bit... naive. The deadly woman was too much like Zack; they both went on about honor, they both spoke too much of their _ideals_. Probably why they got along so well, they were two birds of a feather, always blathering about courage and kindness and other storybook things.

Luxiere knew better. Life had been hard on him, had only given him one break in his life in his compatibility with the G-type SOLDIER program; he had no illusions about how stuff worked. Food was good, money was God, fucking was fun, and you only had so much time before the Reaper sharpened his scythe and came a'calling. Best to fill life with material things, instead of meeting the grave faster by chasing immaterial dreams.

Thus it was, for all that Tifa was the one he admired, he had mostly worked for Aerith. There had been an... unconscious division of duties at SOLDIER after Angeal had been killed. Well, _disappeared_ , officially, but Luxiere was not a man who entertained delusions; Angeal was _dead_.

But his death had split the leadership functions, once handled by him alone. Zack was the officer, deciding general strategy; Tifa was the sergeant, leading on the ground. Zack fought, too, but he was often needed to lead, and so waited to commit himself when it would turn the tide of a battle, or open up a killing blow; it was Tifa who was always there, stuck in the shit with the rest of them.

Aerith had fought alongside them, too, but that wasn't the part of her leadership Luxiere was most familiar with. No... no, what he'd done for her had been the third part of SOLDIER, the part Zack and Tifa had never been comfortable with- the ugly parts.

Aerith's task among her trio was to be the bad guy. Oh, she dressed it up in pretty words, and spoke constantly of how she wished she didn't have to order such terrible deeds... but when push came to shove, she never hesitated to sign off on atrocity. Aerith was almost a Turk in her willingness to dirty her hands, though she'd prayed a lot about it, apparently feeling guilty.

...On further reflection, he might want to scratch out the _almost._ It was the Turks who had requested wetwork the most often, after all, whenever something needed doing that even the incredibly capable Turks could not handle alone. Aerith even had a Turk nearby most days, and the most unusual one at that- Red XIII, the last natural-born Red Lion, present as a constant companion.

( Luxiere had never been sure of Red's exact status in Shinra. He was technically a Turk, he'd heard the Lion say, but he'd never seen him report to Vincent... but Luxiere _had_ seen the last natural-born Lion make special trips to Lucrecia, Vincent's wife; so either she _really_ liked cats... or something else was going on. He hadn't bothered looking into it. Investigating Lucrecia was worse than a death sentence.)

So whenever something terrible had to be done, and the brute force of a SOLDIER was needed to make it so, Aerith was called upon. She would do the work, either with her own hands or through the hands of others- usually Luxiere's. He'd been her favorite, she'd told him once, because he never regretted any of it; interrogations in locked rooms that involved too many knives, innocents kidnapped and harmed to put pressure on their relatives, seductions and shames and sinful things... all these and more had Luxiere done at her command, and he was without regret.

She'd phrased it oddly, though. _So unworthy it almost makes you worthy._ She was a weird fucking person.

Tifa and Zack had quietly agreed not to talk to Aerith about what she did. It had been one of the few genuine sticking points in the trio that led SOLDIER for most of the war... Tifa had never entirely agreed with it.

Stupid. Morality didn't feed a man.

_But without it, you still starve..._

Applause broke him out of his memories and fouling mood both. Ten-Faced Mountain, done with their encore, bowing, as the concert's manager, Izayoi, came out on stage, alongside Shinra's diplomat, Sera. Izayoi was some high-up in New Wutai's power structure, and a shoe-in for the next mayor, given Gorkii was going to be retiring to spend time with his family later this month; this was just a little political coup for her, something to jumpstart her reign as mayor.

“ Thank you, thank you!” Izayoi said to the crowd, the Wutai woman's smile dazzling, and her outfit a classical Wutai formalwear, authentically preserved from before the Reactor had went critical. “ Another big round of applause for Ten-Faced Mountain!”

Cheers and whistles from the crowd, dying down as Sera stepped forward.

“ And on behalf of all of Midgar- thank you so much!” Sera said, bowing to the crowd. More cheers and whistles.

“ And next up,” Izayoi said, “ we've got Redemption with their new single, _Dirge_!”

The crowd clapped and another band came out, all in reds and blacks... wow, their lead singer looked a _lot_ like Genesis had. Strange, to look at a stranger and see a familiar face.

But he wasn't much in the mood for more memories. Hell, he'd turned the TV on to get _away_ from them, not flood himself with them.

He turned the TV off, but the thoughts did not cease. Nothing else to do, after all; no one here to... to _care_ , to talk to him, to distract him from these poisonous thoughts.

He was alone, save for his thoughts.

...Life was so  _simple._ Do terrible things. Get paid. Do terrible things  _efficiently_ . Get paid  _very_ _ well _ . Go home, take off the suit, and then go enjoy the night the way only someone who was very physically fit could- nightclubs and pretty faces and bodies heaving with sweat in the privacy of hotel rooms. 

Shower. Go to work. Exercise, chat with the troops, play office politics. More nightclubs, more sex. 

It had been so...  _ simple. _

But Tifa's words rang in his head.

_ I tried to instill better values in you than that. _

...She had, too. Tifa had been so full of ideas. Alongside the proper spin of a roundhouse kick and the exact way to punch a dragon into unconsciousness, she spoke of her ideals. Hope and fortitude and honesty... and justice, justice foremost of all. Honor she couldn't care less about, but she was a big believer in the idea that people should get what they deserved.

The rough and functional values of the western mountains, where the hard land produced bounty for the wise and good but punished stupidity and cruelty harshly. A place where people had to come together, or starve come winter, where their morals had to navigate proud human hearts that had to be in close proximity.

He'd always thought them meaningless, had mouthed praise for them just so she wouldn't notice that he didn't care. Agree with Tifa in the morning, do the awful things Aerith asked of him at night. That had been his life, until Tifa died, Aerith died, and then it was Shinra directly asking him to do terrible things, and he didn't have to pretend to care anymore.

Morality didn't feed a man.

(  _But without it you still starve_ .)

...There was no one here to help him, and that was the part that was bothering him. He'd almost died... but there was no one here. Not family, he'd have killed his mother for showing up if the drunk wasn't dead already... but friends...

He really didn't have any. Not outside of work, and given the clandestine nature of that work, no friends he truly  _trusted_ . No one around him at all...

He was less than a ghost. A ghost, at least, had the living to haunt.

He didn't even have that. Just the beep of machines and the stink of antiseptic and his thoughts, and a television he didn't even want to watch.

_ The high life,  _ he thought, but it was more bitter than sardonic now. Some life...

...Why had Tifa-  _ Sensei  _ chosen not to kill him? His death wasn't important, because no one cared if he lived or died; but his soldiers, they'd had families and lives of their own, they should have been spared, not him. No one was here to mourn him, but he would be signing the letters that went out to those mourning his dead troops, and every signature indicated at least one person who cared if someone else lived or died... as no one cared for him.

Bleak thoughts for a bleaker mood; but he'd chosen this life. He had to take the death that came with it. It wasn't right his soldiers should die and he live, but then again, what was right had never really entered into the equation, had it?...

(  _ What if I'm wrong? What if Sensei had one last lesson to teach, what if... _ )

Exhausted from wrestling with himself, he tried to rest, tried not to think, even as his thoughts continued, sunk under the surface now, considering and considering, looking over his life, the trajectory of it, seeing where the flight of his life would end- alone, in some hospital room somewhere, dying unfulfilled.

( And some part of him wondered if he might yet stick the landing, as a coin, grimy from lack of use, began to flip in his mind.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun notes! All the Wutai stuff here is a reference to concepts for Wutai that weren't used in FF7 proper. Wutai, along with Yuffie, had a LOT of different variants before we got the version we got in-game; in some ways, that's why I was inspired to give the Wutai people an entirely different backstory here.  
>  ( Same with Yuffie, but we'll get to her later. Let's just say... there is a lot going on there. Not what you're expecting, either. Certain elements of other characters were... preserved... in Yuffie.)
> 
> Ten-Faced Mountain was the original name for Da-Chao. Wutai was originally defined by its unique religion; Sasame, full name Sasame-no-Himemiko, 89th of her name, was the hierarch, though since she's fifteen, real power was in the hands of Izayoi, who was the high priestess of that religion. Sera was originally a spy for Shinra to lure the leaders of Wutai to Shinra's side and corrupt the nation-state to their side.
> 
> Here, with Wutai firmly corrupted already, Sera's job is just that of a diplomatic liaison; she probably has the single easiest job on the Planet. She's also banging Izayoi, which is an open secret in New Wutai (or Costa del Sol, as people keep calling it.) 
> 
> Technically it's a violation of the laws governing carnal relations- diplomats really shouldn't be fucking the people they're supposed to be diplomats to- but no one cares because it's Wutai and Midgar, they know they got each other's backs. The only relationship half as strong is that of Corel with Midgar.
> 
> Even her hit single's from the development; Wutai's middle area was described as a “volcanic area” on early prototypes of the world map!
> 
> Wutai Roller is this world's equivalent of J-Rock, but it leans closer to the X-Japan/Show-Ya/heavy metal side of things than the softer music you might be expecting. Wutai's citizens discovered Midgar's jazz scene when they evacuated to the new continent, as well as Corel's guitars, all three meeting at Shinra's capital; they combined the freeform of jazz and the strumming of guitars with their faster folk music (heavy on the drums) to basically invent what we North Americans would consider the standard rock band.
> 
> Then they conquered the airwaves with it. Wutai Roller is extremely popular pretty much everywhere except Corel, which finds it a bit ostentatious and overly complex. Midgar's own musical history was slightly eaten by its prominence, and there's a bit of a push to restore “traditional” Midgar music to the city- spearheaded by Scarlet in secret, because for all that she does like Wutai Roller, she's never forgotten her origins as a lounge singer, and still prefers Midgar's smooth jazz.
> 
> It's called roller because the first band to come up with it told their manager, when he tried to interrupt, that “we're on a roll, man!” and the name took off from there.
> 
> For the curious, Corel's music is big on simplicity; the joke in Corel is that if you need more than a guitar, you're probably a terrible singer. The traditional Corel music piece is one person, one guitar, and a story; they're big on storytelling through music, usually set to a fairly sedate rhythm. Think Everlast and What It's Like or a really stripped-down Wagon Wheel by Darius Rucker and you're in the right general direction.
> 
> Further side note: I decided upon 7 major decisions in the setting that led to the world ending up this way. 
> 
> Two of those decisions you already know of: Shinra and Wutai agreeing to put the first Mako Reactor in Wutai (and all the literal fallout of that decision), and the second decisions is that of Tifa to follow Cloud across the sea.
> 
> You will learn the others, in time.


	15. INTERLUDE II: A TIMELINE OF THE SHINRA ELECTRIC POWER COMPANY

**INTERLUDE TWO**

**A TIMELINE OF THE SHINRA ELECTRIC POWER COMPANY**

**AS PRESENTED BY THE SHINRA HISTORY MUSEUM**

** Time and Date Identified: 1:00 p.m. on July 13, 0012 AS**

LOCATION: Shinra History Museum, 1 st floor of Shinra Electric Power Company International Headquarters, Midgar

_ Searching for parameters to determine which program to load... _

_Parameters found... checked._

_Appropriate program decided upon._

_Uploading tour_guide.exe...._

_Displaying Department Heads. Loading: Mr. XIII.shpg, Mr. Heidegger.shpg, Mr. Palmer.shpg, Ms. Scarlet.shpg, Mrs. Valentine.shpg, Mr. Valentine.shpg, Mr. Wallace.shpg_

_Beginning voice-over. Loading: Dyne_Tour_Guide.slac..._

Welcome to the Shinra History Museum!

Congratulations on being in the presence of Shinra International Headquarters. You stand in the halls of the greatest company the world has ever known!

Here you can review the storied past of our fine company, as well as a selection of interesting artifacts collected and maintained over the years.

Note that this is a history of Shinra, not Midgar! Many of our guests get confused on this point. While Midgar and Shinra have a long and entwined history, Shinra is an international company with branch offices in many parts of the world; Midgar is our home, but it's not the only place we do business!

If you wish to know more about Midgar's history pre-Shinra, please visit the Midgar History Museum, located in Sector 1, right next to the train station and Staniv's Sushi.

A brief timeline of events:

    * 1940 OC: **The Birth of Shinra!**

  
Our illustrious President is born! His father is a mechanic, his mother a housewife, in one of the eight townships that would merge to form Midgar. From such humble beginnings will grow the company whose illustrious history you are now perusing!   
  
His father, recognizing President Shinra's undeniable talent even as a youth, taught him all he knew, then gave his son ownership of his garage when he turned sixteen, knowing he would do better with it than he would.   
  
While his father would die that same year of 1956 OC, and his mother would follow shortly thereafter, President Shinra would not allow such tragedy to stifle his greatness. Working extensively with the new industrialization spreading across the Eastern Continent from Junon at the time, he made a startling discovery: Mako energy!  
  
While thieves and conmen tried to claim credit for the discovery, President Shinra's undeniable claim to the new source of energy soon triumphed, and his company- formally the Shinra Arms Company- begins to grow.




    * 1958-60 OC: **The Wonder of Mako!**  
  
Shinra expands its business, using the new mako energy to crystallize materia at a much faster rate than other artificial methods (and _far_ faster than natural methods!) In addition, mako energy allows for the building of better weapons, cheaper, using mako as a power source to save on costs.   
  
Selling both the materia and weapons based on the new mako energy, Shinra builds a reputation for excellence with its Advanced Weaponry Division, headed at first by President Shinra himself!

But while weaponry and materia were lucrative pursuits, Shinra discovers his true passion when he begins purchasing power plants. At the time, these generators, run on inefficient coal, were sufficient, but President Shinra dreams of a world united by mako energy, every home powered, all the wonders of the modern world at one's fingertips!  
  
Shinra buys up most of the power companies in the East, converting them from their outdated models to new, more efficient power schemes designed by President Shinra's brilliant mind. Shinra Arms, Inc., changes its name to the Shinra Electric Power Company, to better reflect the company's new direction.  
  
But electricity is not the _only_ thing the company begins producing! Having nothing but the greatest respect for progress and advancement, Shinra creates a new Department: the Science Department. Innovative thinkers in the East are being stifled by the status quo; Shinra deliberately seeks out these mold-breakers, daring to challenge commonly-held beliefs, and his efforts are rewarded with a cadre of the world's greatest scientists- Grimoire Valentine, Gast Faremis, and others.   
  
Professor Gast Faremis is the first Head of the Science Department, leading a crew of avant-garde thinkers. Their work almost immediately proves its worth; they create small, portable mako generators, perfect for survivalists, soldiers, mercenaries, and outdoorsmen, who meet the generators with rave reviews.

_If you wish to know more about current Shinra portable generators, weaponry, or any of our other fine products, please check out Shinra's yearly sales catalog, Shinra Seasonal!_

    * 1961-65 OC: **A Better World, Brought to You by Shinra**  
  
Professor Gast's science teams stumble upon a discovery nearly as impressive as mako; vaccination. Shinra begins producing the first vaccines, one of the greatest benefits of the modern world; the first disease targeted is a childhood illness, chocoboils, and soon expands to deal with gyssy flu and grey marrow, eliminating both diseases in the East within twenty years. No longer are children cut down in their youth, no longer does grey marrow cripple those who catch it!

These are the first benefits to working with Shinra the world comes to know, but they will not be the last.  
  
With the Science Department's stunning success, biotechnology joins weapons research and power generation as a pillar of Shinra's business strategy.




_If you wish to know more, we recommend the books The Invisible Enemy and A Disease-Free World; Chasing Gast's Dream by Shinra Paperworks, LLC, a subsidiary of Shinra Electric Power Company._

  
The Science Department's triumphs are met by equal successes from both the Advanced Weaponry Division and the Power Generation Department. Branch offices are established all over the world, starting with the first one in Kalm, the second being placed in the farthest West- Wutai, which welcomed Shinra with open arms as part of a modernization program spearheaded by Kisaragi Ayane, Wutai's wise leader. Soon, every major city in the world has a Shinra branch office.  
  
At this time, Shinra assets begin to be attacked, primarily by corporate thieves trying to stop the rising company's success. Two new Departments, the Combat Operations Department and the Turk Department, are created to protect Shinra's assets from the parasites and scum who would destroy them.  
  
In late October of this year, Professor Gast approaches President Shinra with a radical new design- a Mako Reactor, big enough to provide plentiful power to entire cities. This wondrous new invention will be the crown jewel of Shinra's work; but where to put it? President Shinra debates what area is worthy to receive the first of these new Reactors.

    * 1966 OC: **The Fall of Wutai**

Kisaragi Ayane dies at the start of this year under mysterious circumstances, and all Shinra mourns the loss of one of their staunchest allies. Her son, Kisaragi Godo, a greedy and ambitious sort, approaches Shinra, and requests that the company place the first Mako Reactor in Wutai. In honor of their close relationship with his mother, and suspecting nothing of Godo's real motives, the company agrees to do so.  
  
Ground is broken for the first Mako Reactor in January of this year. The Mako Reactor is scheduled to be finished by December, and will increase the quality of life for all Wutai.  
  
Kisaragi Godo, however, has other plans. Secretly jealous of Shinra's success, and smelling a profit in betrayal, Kisaragi Godo begins to steal company secrets and material from the Reactor's construction, planning to sell them to Shinra's corporate competitors. His theft of company secrets and resources is soon caught by Shinra's brave protectors, and in an attempt to discredit the company, he actives the Reactor early, before its shielding is completed.  
  
Mako energy, rendered unsafe by Godo's actions, floods Wutai. The Reactor does not explode, as Shinra's excellent safety protocols, even half-finished, delay any such critical reaction; however, the Reactor's slow bleed will destroy Wutai as surely as if the Reactor _had_ exploded. Mutations will run rampant, materia and magic will go awry, and all the flora and fauna will warp into monsters from the corrupted mako Godo's greed and foolishness has unleashed.

While this problem was caused solely by Kisaragi Godo's treachery, the Science Head, Professor Gast, leads the charge to save the people of Wutai. Shinra airships lift thousands of Wutai's people out of danger and deliver them to the eight townships that will, eventually, combine into Midgar, rescuing an entire culture from disaster. President Shinra pays for the evacuation out of his own personal funds.

_For those interested in further viewing, we recommend the films_ _The Fall of Wutai_ _and_ _The Last Pink Blossom Trembled_ _, both by Shinra Films, Inc, a subsidiary of the Shinra Electric Power Company._

    * 1967 OC: **The Rise of Midgar**  
  
The refugees from Wutai produce an interesting problem; where to house them? Even Shinra cannot create land- or so say its detractors. Shinra proves them wrong, creating the Department of Urban Development, and with Ruvie Tuesti as its first Head, they set to work creating wonders. Plate construction begins, moving ahead rapidly thanks to the efforts of the Wutai, who are eager to repay Shinra for saving their lives from Godo's foolishness.  
  
Ruvie Tuesti's genius does not merely end at the Plate, wondrous as it is; she works together with Science Head Professor Gast to invent new kinds of plants, increasing food yield by factors of magnitude.   
  
The first murmurs of jealousy begin to circulate in the West, starting at Cosmo Canyon, a “settlement” of religious fanatics and phony psychics who begin to agitate against Shinra's good works, blaming Shinra for the Fall of Wutai and claiming that it engages in “unnatural” practices.   
  
Shinra, displaying class and tact, ignores these protests, willing to let their actions speak for themselves, though the Departments of the Turks and Combat Operations see an increase in raids on Shinra assets that they successfully repulse.

    * 1970 OC: **Rising Stars and Tragedy**

It's no secret that Shinra's success has always relied heavily on its people. Shinra's greatest resource is not mako, but talent, and in 1970, two rising stars are making waves.  
  
In the Department of Combat Operations, one name begins to stand out- Frederick Heidegger, at this time a twenty-one-year-old grunt, whose talent at defending Shinra's property draws the interest of his superiors. He is chosen for the hardest missions, and his stunning successes propel his career forward.  
  
Meanwhile, in the Science Department, tragedy is met with a redoubling of efforts; the upcoming researcher Grimoire Valentine, father of current Head Turk Vincent Valentine, is killed in a laboratory accident.   
  
His assistant Lucrecia Crescent takes up his research, despite her youthful age of twenty; already considered brilliant by her peers, she begins to truly establish herself after her teacher's death, catching the eye of Professor Faremis as a possible successor.  
  
His son, too, honors his father by redoubling his own efforts; a young man himself, his talents are martially inclined rather than scientifically minded, and he rapidly becomes one of the great names among the Turks.  
  


    * 1976 OC: **The Plate, Complete!**  
  
The Plate, considered impossible by others, is completed, ahead of schedule. Ruvie Tuesti held to the job even despite giving birth to her son, Reeve, in 1972, and her efforts are rewarded when the Plate rises high in the sky. The eight townships merge together to form the city of Midgar, named for an empire that once reigned in the east, and Shinra Headquarters is placed atop the Plate.

At this time, Midgar is powered by coal-based power plants, located outside of the city; coal in vast amounts is purchased from the nation of Corel in the Western Continent. While Mako Reactors were proposed, and the Plate designed to eventually accept the addition of such Reactors, the older, less-efficient coal powerplants are utilized in the initial design due to a pre-existing deal with the Corel region to buy a certain quota of coal each year; Shinra honors its agreements.




    * 1977 OC-Present: **SOLDIER!**

Research continues apace. Head Gast, working with such luminaries as Professor Crescent, Professor Hojo, Professor Holalnder and Professor Hewley, discovers the process by which a human may be made _super_ human. They dub the project SOLDIER, and while they are years from the first successful results, even the earliest days of the project show promise.  
  
In time, the greatest heroes will arise from the SOLDIER program, names we are sure any of our guests will recognize: Angeal Hewley, son of Professor Hewley; Aerith Valentine, daughter of Lucrecia Crescent and Vincent Valentine, both Heads at Shinra; Tifa Lockhart, an immigrant from Nibelheim in the West. All heroes who gave their lives in defense of Shinra.  
  
The SOLDIER program is active to this day, protecting all Shinra from any threats.




_Fun Fact: Did you know? Our museum has several SOLDIER artifacts, including the Motor Drive, a custom weapon Tifa Lockhart used early in the War, the personalized motorcycle Aerith Valentine used, and our collection's crown jewel, Angeal's Buster Sword, reforged!_

    * 1980-85 OC: **The Sable Project**

Lucrecia Crescent approaches the Department Heads with a most unexpected guest at her side: the last Red Lion, Nanaki, whom she had found wandering in the West. Fleeing Cosmo Canyon, whose ungrateful and cowardly human inhabitants had tricked his father into fighting and dying on their behalf against hostile monster tribes, Nanaki had been searching for help in possibly reviving his species, and when Lucrecia heard of his plight, she was moved to assist.  
  
Lucrecia proposes an almost impossibly ambitious project- she will clone Nanaki, and in doing so, revive his entire species, relying on a “Chaos” theory her teacher Grimoire had created to allow for variations in the clones that will, effectively, allow them to become entirely new individuals, and not just clones of Nanaki.   
  
Shinra, wanting to aid the last member of a lost species, agrees to fund her research.  
  
Dubbed the Sable project, it was not without its setbacks. In particular, a cowardly assassination attempt by insurgents- later revealed to be directed by Cosmo Canyon- leads to the deaths of two loyal Shinra employees. Professor Gast Faremis, the first Head of the Science Department, is found murdered, alongside his Turk bodyguard, Veld Verdot, both men killed with claw-like weaponry. The intent of the dishonorable murderers was to discredit Nanaki by pinning their crimes on him, in hopes Shinra will believe them and shut down the program.  
  
But Shinra is wise; Shinra mourned the losses of Head Faremis and Veld Verdot, but knew Nanaki was innocent, and continued the project.  
  
In time, during the thirteenth set of trials, Lucrecia is able to produce the first two new Lions, dubbed Baz and Lin by Nanaki after ancient heroes of his people. Head Faremis had been looking at Lucrecia as a successor; after his death, her success at saving the Red Lions becomes the final proof that she was worthy to succeed him as Head of the Science Department, and she ascends to that position.  
  
A new Department, Red Lion Welfare, is created, and Nanaki appointed as the first non-human Head. He officially adopts the name Nanaki Red XIII; Red for Lucrecia's affectionate nickname for her friend, and XIII for the set of trials in which the first Red Lions were produced, even tattooing the latter onto his skin.




_Fun Fact: Did you know? Red Lions, in honor of their Head, often name themselves similarly; their proper name being their first name, followed by a color and a number of significance to them._

    * 1984-2000 OC: **To the Stars!**

Department Head Crescent is now Head Valentine, after her marriage to fellow Head, Vincent Valentine, Head of the General Affairs and Auditing Division (more commonly called the Turks)... but marriage and the birth of her child Aerith Valentine don't slow her down at all. A group of engineers and scientists with an audacious and ambitious plan- the exploration of space- come to her attention, and she decides to support them.  
  
With her, Head Nanaki, and Head Vincent's support, the group gets an audience, and Rocket Town is established in the West, being the area most suited for space launches.   
  
Palmer, a businessman who funds the group and is as excited about space as anyone, is appointed Head of the newest of Shinra's Departments- Space and Aeronautics. Soon, Shinra will be the first company to expand their reach past the Planet itself!




    * 1992-1999 OC: **A World of Mako- but Trouble on the Horizon**

President Shinra had never forgotten his dream of cheap energy for the entire Planet, and in 1990, opportunity arises once more. Barret Wallace, the young mayor of one of the biggest towns in the Corel citystates, contacts Shinra and requests that a Mako Reactor be placed near the town. President Shinra meets with him personally, and finding in Mr. Wallace a man of integrity and honor, agrees to the deal.  
  
The Reactor rises high into the sky; Mr. Wallace is made of better stuff than the dishonorable Kisaragi Godo, and the Reactor is complete in record time. As it fires up for the first time, the people of Corel no longer have to break their backs in the coal mines for power; cheap and plentiful energy is suddenly available to power any device they can think of.  
  
Mr. Wallace becomes a steadfast ally of Shinra, advocating for them with other nations, and soon every nation in the world save Cosmo Canyon has a Reactor.   
  
Unfortunately, success and prosperity breed resentment in those too lazy and backwards to achieve it themselves. Seeing how well the forward-thinking people of Corel were doing, propaganda begins pouring out of jealous Cosmo Canyon in a steady stream. While Mr. Wallace makes noble efforts to counteract their lies, Cosmo Canyon manages to spread its poison to every nation of the world; in the years to come, most of the nations of the West will come to agree with them, save Corel. They will even convince Mideel of the East to join their misguided crusade.   
  
Protests and sabotage outside the very Reactors that provide power to these nations become almost everyday occurrences, waving the banners of those nations that will, in time, join together to form what will be called the Western Alliance; though its proper name is the rather self-aggrandizing Alliance against Shinra's Imperialism, revealing the depth of their hatred for Shinra and all its good works.  
  
It is in this time of need that Heidegger first takes his place as Head of Combat Operations. President Shinra also steps down as Head of Advanced Weaponry to focus on running the company as a whole, giving that coveted title to a young engineer brought to his attention by Lucrecia Valentine. Vivienne Scarlet, who despite her youth has made contributions greater than engineers twice her age, has a drive to excel that reminds President Shinra of his own youth, and he firmly believes she will do great things in the company.  
  
His investment is repaid when Scarlet, that same year, invents the Gelnika transport plane and a suit of powered armor to better protect Shinra troops in the field, alongside prototype technosoldiers for the Roboguard, who will be needed much sooner than anyone at Shinra anticipates.

Ruvie Tuesti also retires at this time, passing her Department Head title down to her son, Reeve Tuesti.

    * 0000 AS: **The Shinra Calendar and the Rocket Disaster**

Rocket Town, after years of research, is ready to launch the No. 26! The event is so widely recognized as a pinnacle of achievement for sentient life on the Planet that that President Shinra declares it will be the start of a new age- literally. The year is designated 0000 of the Age of Space, or AS for short.   
  
The new calendars Shinra distributes for free to those nations allied with it, and the new calendar timeline is a great benefit. Called the Shinra Calendar, it replaces the confusion of multiple calendars with a single clear timeline based on a single clear scientific achievement, increasing unity and efficiency amongst the nations using the shared calendar.  
  
Cosmo Canyon, predictably, agitates against the adoption of the calendar, claiming cultural oppression and the erasure of unique identities; they are ignored.  
  
But they do not silence themselves in the face of the world's disapproval, but lash out. In what is now widely recognized as the first attack of the war, the cowardly Western Alliance sabotaged the launch; at the very moment Cid Highwind, engineer and brave pilot, became the first man in space, he was struck down, the Rocket exploding in midair.  
  
The world mourns a hero. Shinra investigates, the Turks eventually finding the evidence needed to pin the blame on the machinations of Cosmo Canyon; Shinra accuses them on the world stage, and demands reparations and justice. Cosmo Canyon claims innocence, despite the overwhelming evidence, and the tension that has built over the last few years comes to a head.




_Those wishing to know more can visit the Space and Aeronatuics Museum in Sector 8, located next to the Cid Highwind Memorial._

    * 0002-0007 AS: **The World War**

The Western Alliance, jealous of the greatness enjoyed by the citizens allied with Shinra, attacks. Shinra and its allies successfully defend themselves and their way of life.   
  
We will not go long into detail on the War; that would be, and _is_ , another museum entirely. We encourage guests with interests in the War, specifically, to both check out Shinra's History Channel, which often has programs about the War, and the Museum of the World War, located in Sector 4, next to the Shinra Post Office.  
  
A moment of silence for all the brave lives lost at this time, both on the frontlines and at home: Rufus Shinra, Reeve Tuesti, Aerith Valentine, Tifa Lockhart, and other names that will be remembered throughotu history, memorialized at the War Garden in Sector 9.   
  
Visiting hours are from noon to midnight; fees are waived for veterans. Please have your veteran's card ready at the gate if you wish to waive your fees.

    * 0008-0012 AS: **Peace in Our Time**

Ever since the World War, Shinra has continued doing what it has always done for the nations that have accepted its supremacy- providing low-cost, efficient products that blow their competitors out of the water. Cid Highwind's dream yet lives; rockets regularly enter space. While the Shinra Moonbase is still being built, the Grimoire Valentine Space Station is complete, yet another wonder created by Shinra!  
  
The world is at peace, and will remain so, for as long as Shinra's benevolent hand lays atop it. Praise Shinra; AS may stand for Age of Space, but it might as well stand for the Age of Shinra!




_End of program..._

_Enacting shutdown protocols._

_Program terminated. Connection with terminal closed. Entering sleep mode._

_..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This document reflects what you'd see if Seventh Endmost Vision was an actual video game; I imagine this would pop up on a terminal in the raid on Shinra Headquarters, providing additional info for curious players.
> 
> While it's impossible to truly mimic the feeling of "learning extra stuff" that such a videogame can provide you in a written format, including this information in an Interlude is the closest equivalent.
> 
> I like to imagine that my writing is about an alternate reality FFVII; that's why it's called Seventh Endmost Vision. Final Fantasy, Endmost Vision... you get it.
> 
> Do consider, when looking at this Timeline, that this is the OFFICIAL Shinra line... which means it may have... interesting deviations from reality.


	16. The Fairy Godfarmer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sephiroth POV!
> 
> This was the hardest chapter to write due to some personal things happening; but it's out now, and the personal issues are looking up, so yay!

**Chapter Fifteen**

**The Fairy Godfarmer**

In Sector 5, asleep in his mother's house, Sephiroth Gainsborough dreamed strange dreams.

This was not, in and of itself, unusual. He'd always had strange dreams. Sometimes they were bad. He dreamed of a great and angry-faced warrior queen, who had ice in her hands, who froze his flesh and blood until his silent scream was frozen forever in ice. He dreamed of a cold northern cave she had dumped him in, leaving him to suffer forever, trapped and hungry and hurt.

The last dream was more recent; he'd started dreaming, a few years ago, about a tall tower of steel built by vicious bees in expensive suits, who held his body in a great coffin of steel. He would be trapped forever, his blood taken by force, poured onto other bees to make warriors of them; and then, at the dream's end, a queen bee in a labcoat would come along and tear his head off, to study it and make immunities from the dreams left inside his stolen skull.

Those were nightmares, that left him panting, shivering, shaking when he awoke, his eyes full of tears, just wanting the pain to  _ stop _ .

But sometimes they were really nice. He dreamed of eating and being full, of drinking deep of a gorgeous river of green, of a vast banquet all over the world, laid out just for him. He dreamed of space, not as it was seen from the Planet but as it looked from  _ inside _ , saw the things that Cid Highwind must have seen before the fire took him, traveling the stars as their friend. The strangest good dream of all, a dream of descending, falling to Gaia in a great ball of fire; not to die on impact, oh no, but to be born at last, hatching from the egg that had carried him safely through the stars.

Those were good dreams; he woke feeling accomplished, feeling as if he'd achieved something, fulfilled his purpose.

He'd had those recurring visions in his sleep all his life; though he was no closer to knowing what they meant than he'd ever been, they were, at least, familiar.

But now... now, for the first time, he dreamed a new dream, and for the first time, there was a person in his dream.

Well... something  _ like  _ a person. She was made of glistening green mako, and it only outlined her figure, presented her like a living drawing or sketch in the air, something that had few details but many vague touches. The figure was female-shaped, and a motherly figure at that, had the plumpness childbirth tossed on a woman's figure. Long hair, and the impression of flowing clothes; the mako outlined a mouth and a nose, fingers and bare feet, but oddly outlined only one eye, her left, the other space left empty and blank.

( That felt important, the way the strangest things did in dreams. Where was her eye? Had it been taken like his blood and his skull, who had it, why did it matter?)

She was sitting, facing him, surrounded by... trains? All about them were the corpses of locomotives, heavy and rusting with the weight of ages, forming a circular area... and in the middle of that area, where she sat, was a small patch of flowers, a mimicry of his own little garden.

Flowers... _his_ flowers, he realized, something inside his heart heaving at the understanding, the lady of mako was surrounded by sable-black blooms, the purple of the new life he had made. A little garden of his nameless blossoms, surrounded by concrete and steel and rusting junk. There were children playing around her, their forms indistinct, outlined by that same green mako, his eyes perceiving them as if through sheets or thick cloth, more indistinct and muffled than the woman, phantoms at playtime.

She looked up at him, and even with her entire body merely an outline, it was impossible to mistake the fond glance. She was smiling at him, and she turned one of his blossoms towards him- he saw materia inside it, white materia, and she winked with her one remaining eye before she got up.

She walked to him, and put a hand on his shoulder, and her grin reminded him of his mother, Elmyra, that same fondness, that same concern, that same... _love_.

His heart clenched in his chest, even in the dream. Like his  _ mother _ \- 

He knew, suddenly and without a doubt, who this woman was. Elmyra had never hidden his past from him, after all; neither had his father, before he died protecting Shinra's assets, two decades ago now. They were his parents, and he loved them... but they had also told him that they'd found him on the doorstep, that he had been left there. An adoptee... and he'd always wondered where his birht mother was, especially as his strangeness became apparent over the years.

He looked at her again. His mother. It  _ had  _ to be. 

He tried to ask. His words came out as hissing dissonance.

She cringed back from him, shaking her head, wincing in pain. He began to apologize on reflex, and she put a finger to his lips to hush him.

Then she spoke, and her words  _ hurt,  _ something of trumpets and blizzards and the terrible cold he so hated, cutting into him.

She stopped, and her expression- what he could see of it- grew sad, and she hugged him, perhaps her way of apologizing.

He leaned into that hug, returned it. His mother, this was- he had so many questions, she would know what he was, why the Planet talked to him, why he had been so strange all his life- but he couldn't _ask_ her, he wept tears of sheer frustration.

She stepped back, face sad, ghost of a mouth frowning. The shorter woman leaned up and wiped away his tears, a tender motion- the same motion Elmyra had made in his youth, when he'd hurt himself, and Sephiroth thought his heart would stop at the gesture. He felt full to bursting, his _mother_ , all his answers, right here, kind to the child she had never met, and every insecurity he'd felt in all his years came roaring back to life. He felt like he was coming apart at the seams. All the answers to the questions that had plagued him all his life, but he couldn't _ask_...

( He had heard of being careful what you wished for, but this felt petty and cruel both. He wanted to _know_ , know _why_ he was what he was, and to be so close to the answers- and so far- choked him with the unfairness of it all.)

She poked him in the chest, pulling him out of his own thoughts, and then she pointed at the ground. They lifted up, up, what-

Movement, the world turning beneath them, to stop somewhere familiar. To his mother's house, to his garden, he could see all of Sector 5 at once. There was Kyrie's little merchant stall and her chocobo, hidden in an alley from Shinra patrols; there the children's little secret place, which he himself had played in long ago, a thing passed down between children for generations. The Leaf House, the orphans inside sleeping, the community center, everything in his home, laid out beneath him.

Then the... the woman ( _mother_ ) put a hand on his shoulder and pointed with her left hand- left, he was left-handed, was this where he got it from?

Her left hand, which might be an answer in and of itself, pointed to a place he knew well, his church. They went towards it without moving at all, flying even as they stood still, once more the world was moving beneath them instead of the other way around; and when they stood over his church, she pointed down.

A hole in the roof, a hole in the attic below the roof, and another hole in the planks on the second floor that he'd added just last week.

And at the bottom of all those holes, laying amidst his flowers, was a woman. Not just any woman; a gorgeous woman, long hair and fine features... but what drew the eye was that she wore the battle-scarred armor of a SOLDIER, laying about her in shattered pieces as she lay sleeping amongst his flowers.

Wait... he _knew_ this woman! AVALANCHE, the SOLDIER, when the first Reactor exploded... He'd given her a flower, and when he looked, he saw it sitting on her armor, dissolving into ashes.

A single white feather fell from nowhere and touched the woman, and she began to breathe again, opening her eyes- those green eyes, those strange slits, tiger eyes, piercing and penetrating and heavy, with the weight of the sun behind them.

( Somebody _important_ , a sun indeed; the world was beginning to revolve around her, and her decisions would have their own gravity, for better and for worse, he could _feel_ it, she stood at the fulcrum of the world and was deciding which way to push)

He turned to his mother next to him, almost opened his mouth to ask one of his thousand questions, but her finger was already shushing him even as he tried, gentle pressure on his lips. More frustration, steam churning his guts to gory mush. How was he to ask the questions he now had? Why was the SOLDIER in his church, did she  _ fall  _ on it, who  _ was  _ she?

(  _ Are you my mother, are you dead, why did you leave me on that doorstep, what am I _ )

But his mother pointed then- pointed up- to the Reactors, and he watched as the terrible flame went out, with a sound like victory fanfare, the Planet rejoicing as one of its great wounds closed. Two little blonde figures escaped on stolen motorbikes, one without an arm, the other wielding a beautiful broken blade, desperately outracing the thugs that chased them. The Lifestream, freed from the furnace, curled around them, and inside he knew they had the love of a world entire, the Planet loving them unreservedly, the way it had never loved him.

Even as they escaped, back down to the slums, the mako ghost pointed again towards the woman laying in the flowers, and then she touched his scythe- which he hadn't even been aware he was holding- touched one of the green dots of materia there, the materia he used to heal.

He looked at it, then at the sleeping beauty, and when he turned to the woman, she nodded her head, and smiled at him.

-

He awoke with a start, cold sweat pouring off of him, his eyes full of unshed tears.

He blinked, once, twice, three times, wiping his eyes and his brow both, eventually cutting through the blur of saltwater to take in the world around him. Dazed, it took him a few seconds to register where he was; he slept in many places these days, his self-appointed duties carrying him all over Sector 5, that he might be forgiven for not recognizing his old bedroom in his mother's house. The big building creaked around him, settling in its sleep, the ancient domicile the last thing the Gainsborough family had somehow clung onto all these long years, past Midgar and the Plate and the slums, the last true landowners of Sector 5.

( His, someday, when his mother passed. It was one reason he'd never entirely moved out; defending the land and the house was the first duty of a Gainsborough, and should he start a family of his own someday, his children would grow up in this house.)

His room was all about him, comforting and familiar. There his window, overlooking his garden; next to it, his bookcase, the most precious thing he owned, books his great comfort all his life. It was still stuffed with the remnants of all his learning: gardening books on the bottom, medical texts in the middle, the top a varied and scattershot collection of other things, his own attempt at homebrewing a classical education on top of the medical training he was trying to learn. Books of higher math and science and classics of literature, found in the dump or purchased with what little spending gil he could come up with, trying to learn everything he could.

( He'd found it easy, all of it, easy; even the books on calculus and other math had been simple enough to work through. He wondered if he was simply smart, or if it was part of his alien nature, or if the work wasn't actually that hard and he simply thought it was. He had no metric, no measurement, no way to know where he stood, to know what was human and what was inhuman inside him, to know if he was more of a person or more of a... thing.)

Laying atop the bookshelf were the books he'd read to learn more personal things, mostly books on Planetology, trying to learn about the entity that communicated with him; they'd proven helpful, to his own surprise, had given him some of the few answers to his many mysteries that he had. Language books, focusing on the Western Continent, hoping to learn their tongues so he could read more of the wisdom they'd written; books on various religions, seeking answers in the Heavens for his earthly troubles. Not as directly helpful, but good for provoking thought, and they'd proven their worth in a way he couldn't have foreseen.

( His eyes ran briefly over the book on the Goddess faith that Kyrie had borrowed, in the bad times after her grandmother's execution; he had not found answers, but she had found solace, and to know it had helped was enough.)

Past the impromptu library were the other things he'd left here, the safest storage place he knew. A standing wardrobe, also pulled from a junkpile, half open from a broken lock, revealing an impressive array of medical equipment. It was all a little bit used, every piece old, but he'd cleaned them and cleaned them until no rust or dirt remained. A heavy black medical bag sat inside, the equipment he wished desperately he'd had on him when the Reactor exploded. He'd been so dazed from the disaster that he hadn't even thought of it at the time; he'd healed and helped where he could with magic and making do, substituting strips of cloth for bandages and strong liquor for sterilization, the doctor desperate as his patients...

( Still, unlicensed physician that he was, it was a testament to his skill and his seven years of practice that no one he worked on died, and all recovered- including a heavy-set man saved by a SOLDIER, whose wounds Sephiroth had treated and treated well. He'd gone back to work a few days later.)

His mind slipped away from the memories of the disaster as he struggled towards real consciousness, mind still slowly ticking off the sights his eyes saw even as it tried to reboot itself. His closet door, inside which sat the black and grey working man's clothes he favored, all of which contrasted nicely with his white hair. None of his clothes from childhood remained; he'd given those to the Leaf House when he'd outgrown them. That had been back before their mysterious benefactor had started supplying them, when they'd needed all the help they could get, before deep pockets of gil had eased their burdens. A few large paintings on the walls, things he'd salvaged from the dumps, with no unifying theme except he'd thought it was sad to leave them rotting in a gutter; a picture of a cave behind a waterfall, a picture of an aged Red Lion howling at the moon, and Wutai, before the Reactor.

His scythe, blade shut, leaning up beside his room's door, his armlet dangling off of it, gleaming softly with materia. The materia his mother had touched...

He shook his head, long hair flying. He had no time for sleep; what he'd seen... he should go check on his church.

He freed himself from the pile of his mother's homemade blankets atop him, spun back when her hands did not hurt so much. He got cold, colder than was normal- for a human, anyway- but his mother had simply responded by giving him more covers. A practical and hard-nosed woman, Elmyra was; she saw a problem, and she applied a solution. His bed creaked, an old thing protesting his presence, and he idly noted that his pillowcase was a bit threadbare. He'd need to sew that back together soon... he'd toss it on the to-do list.

First things first- the church the ghost woman had shown him.

( His mother... she had his answers. She knew why red poured into his blue eyes sometimes, she knew why he knew things he shouldn't, she would know why he got so cold. She would know what he was. If only he could speak with her...)

He arose, the world around him not making any sounds of disturbance. Just the quiet sounds he'd known all his life, the hum of insects and wildlife thriving in this little spot of nature in Midgar's empty wastes, the house's creaks, his mother's breathing, more strained than it had been, age and time finally dragging the great titaness of a woman down. She sounded better than she had, though; the medication he'd prescribed was working. He'd have to get Kyrie to steal more for him.

He dressed, grey shirt and black overalls, making ready, grabbing his scythe... and, after a moment, his doctor's bag. If that SOLDIER woman had fallen into his church, she'd need... well, she'd need a coroner, frankly. If she'd fallen from the Plate- and he couldn't think of where else she might have fallen from, his church was in a fairly open spot with nothing else above it- she should be dead. Falling from that height, as every slumdweller knew, a person did not impact so much as... splash.

He'd seen it before, after all. Plate folk who wanted to commit suicide almost always did it by jumping, since they apparently didn't think about the fact that people lived under them; the slumdwellers had to deal with the aftermath. Five years ago, one had even managed to land on Kyrie's wagon-shop, completely destroying it.

Still... that made him think, as he put on his boots. That particular jumper's body had been more intact than the others, not nearly liquefied by impact, the wagon cushioning his fall. Maybe that explained it. His church's roof, the attic floor, and then the boards he'd put on the second floor... if she hit all three of them, and then landed on the soft soil of his garden, it might just cushion her fall enough that she wouldn't die. And she _was_ a SOLDIER... maybe that was enough.

He shook his head. He hadn't even questioned what he'd seen... but... he was so sure. His mother, talking to him. He talked to the Planet, why not his mother, too? Why _not_? Nothing else about his existence made the least bit of sense.

His thoughts were interrupted when the sound of something _big_ exploding resounded in the distance, like the thunder of foreign gods. He whipped his head towards the window, long hair flying, and saw a plume of fire and smoke shine briefly, rising up near...

His church.

The Planet, suddenly screaming inside his head, the wordless screech of swarming cicadas. It was hard to understand it most of the time; but now, now he knew exactly what it wanted, it came in clear as day.

_I'm already on it_ , he sent back to the Planet, vaguely irritated at the erstwhile taskmaster he hadn't ever asked for. The Planet's clear distress signal faded a little, but was still there, a prod in the back of his mind. He _could_ kick it out... but they'd just slipped into some kind of begrudging alliance, and he didn't want to offend it. If you _could_ offend a Planet.

Scythe in hand, he rushed out of his door, pausing only when he heard his mother, calling from her bedroom.

“ Son? Where are you rushing off- what's happening?”

“ I'll explain later,” he said. “ But someone needs my help.”

“ Someone always does,” she said, hacking a laugh. “ I'll get up and get something ready.”

He wanted to argue with her, but the urgency of the Planet propelled him; he had no time.

“ Alright,” he said. “ Do not strain yourself, mother.”

“ Don't strain _yourself_ , boy,” she said with contrary feistiness. A smile found its way involuntarily to his face. He liked hearing that fire in her voice; she didn't have it often enough, these days.  
  


“ I will,” he promised, and then he was gone, out the door, onto the stone pathway that led to the slums. His garden resounded in his strange senses as he went, the life in it registering in his mind as though he had a radar in his head; beetles in the grass, frogs awake and singing around the small pond he'd built for them to breed in, the gentle coos of little birds, sleeping in the birdhouses he'd made and hung about the place. Nothing truly surprising, nothing in his garden that should not be there- save a stray cat, come in hungry from somewhere else. She was an old calico, and heavy with young that were near birth; she was feasting on a fat mouse she'd caught in his fields, relishing the good taste.

Well, that was something _else_ he'd need to do. Free-roaming cats wrecked the ecosystems they entered, and Sector 5 barely had an ecosystem to start with. He'd have to catch her later, give the kittens to other homes, spay her, and find a home for her, too...

Maybe he'd give her to his mother; she'd spoken of wanting a pet around the home, and she'd always liked cats.

Still, onward, he had no time for this. He let the sensations wash over him without distracting him. They were strong tonight; he knew if he stared in a mirror, his eyes would be turning violet. When the red was upon him, bleeding into the blue, he was... different. Stranger.

( _Less human_ , some part of him whispered, and he ignored it, as he always had. That was true, but he did not like the implications, the way the words seemed like a... a judgment on him. He was human enough. He had to be.)

He walked swiftly, scythe's staff clicking against the stone. As he passed the Leaf House, he heard the hubbub inside, not with his ears but with whatever strange organ in his body let him sense _life,_ more of that extrasensory perception that so unnerved him. The children were up and moving, save for Moggie, who could sleep through an artillery bombardment; little lights in the home, little dots of warmth. The housemother was up, too, a brighter warmth, more life in her, and she was standing in front of the children; he could not see or hear her, but her position in the room indicated she was probably trying to keep them calm.

He'd have to stop by later, make sure the kids were alright. Yet another thing on the to-do list, which was getting long and rather strange, he had to admit to himself as he went down the backalleys of Sector 5, using the rooftops for a shortcut when he needed to, strong legs carrying his tall frame through the air with ease.

_What_ _ does _ _ my to-do list look like? _ he wondered as he wound his way towards the main road, listening with senses human and inhuman to the slums waking up around him, people calling for answers, those who had been awake responding when they could.  _ First would be... figure out what the hell I am... that's an old one, been there since I was fifteen and my eyes changed color the first time. Figure out what the Planet wants- that's an ongoing one... and this SOLDIER woman is wrapped up in it now, too. Those are the big two that I'll never finish; beneath them... Kyrie stole more vaccines, I need to get those distributed. Kyrie also stole more medical supplies, need to see what she's got. Need to repay her, I know she's low on gil... but can't do it openly or she'll fight me on it. I heard Holland say he was interested in some of the stranger stuff she's picked up; I'll hand him the gil, he can buy it and that'll support Kyrie for a while yet. Ask Kyrie to steal medicine for mother. Pay her back for it, again in a way she can't refuse. Catch that cat in my garden, fix her up of whatever's going on with her- she's a stray, so worms and fleas, probably- give the kittens to new homes, spay her, give her to mother. Make sure the kids are alright. _

_...I need to write a checklist down._

His musings were interrupted by a shout from nearby.

“ Hey! Champion! Good timing, you have any idea what the hell's going on?”

He looked over at the speaker, taking note of where his feet had taken him while his head was distracted. He was near the route to his church, itself located in an abandoned area of Sector 5 that had been used as a dumping ground for Shinra construction equipment once the Plate was built; the church had avoided damage, somehow, but the area was dangerous even by under-Plate standards.

( The only places worse were the subway tunnels, full of hungry grashtrikes, and Sector 7, which had problems no other slum had.)

The speaker was Gwen, a recent immigrant from Sector 7, who had the town watch's only sniper rifle slung over her shoulder. The short-haired Corelian woman stood with a knot of three other watchmen, who were looking to her for leadership despite the fact she hadn't been in town six months; she'd effectively elected herself watch captain, mostly because everyone was too afraid to tell her no.

He was looking down on her from a nearby cafe's roof; he hopped down gently to stand on the same level as her, though given the height difference he was still looking down. All around them was a small press of people, milling about, confused and worried, along with a few who were just sticking their heads out of their windows, everyone wondering what the hell was going on, and all of them turning to Sephiroth and Gwen in this time of trouble.

“ I was hoping to find out,” the farm boy answered her. He glanced out the gate from his position atop a general store's roof; from the higher vantage point, all he could see was a set of fires, dots of red decorating the dark. “ I was asleep until a few moments ago.”

“ I wasn't,” Gwen said- well, snarled. She was the angriest person Sephiroth had ever met, and her bottomless well of fury bled out into all of her interactions. “ Was on patrol when the damn sky started falling. I thought the fucking Plate was coming down!”

Multiple people cursed and not a few made marks of faith, either the spread-hands sign of the Descendants or the protective marks of other religions, and Sephiroth felt an unconscious urge to join them. The Plate falling was the ultimate bogeyman, the great terror of all those who lived under those vast steel plates; Gwen should know better than to just toss that out into a conversation with a crowd nearby already scared.

“ The Plate appears to be stable,” Sephiroth said, deliberately keeping his voice calm and loud enough to be heard by those around him. A panic would help no one. “ I am going to go investigate; I want to know if the church was damaged.”

“ Good, I'm heading that way too,” she said. “ Want to see what's going, and wouldn't mind having a doctor along for the trip.”

A rattling sound echoed down the streets as a chocobo-pulled wagon came up. In the dark, with the only light available that which came from open doors or windows, it was hard to see the large, painted sign on the wagon's side announcing KYRIE'S EMPORIUM – Unique Inventory! Rare Goods! No Refunds!

“ I knew you'd be here, Sephie!” came a sweet, mocking voice. “ Something weird's happening, so of course you're there!”

He turned, his lips trying to lift up in a grin despite the situation.

“ Hello, Kyrie,” he said, before an idea struck him. “ Me and Watch Captain Gwen are going to investigate what's going on. Your wagon- can we use it?”

“ For a price,” she said with a grin. His oldest friend sat at her wagon's front, the reins in her hands, the very image of an innocent young woman of Midgar descent underneath her frankly magnificent newsie cap.

( Which was a bold-faced lie, of course, if not nearly as much of one as it used to be.)

“ I'll owe you a favor,” Sephiroth said. Kyrie laughed, and the thief, merchant, and thieving merchant patted her chocobo, an aged yellow hen.

“ That'll do!” Kyrie said with a laugh. “ You wanting to hitch a ride?”

“ If you would. I need to get to my church,” Sephiroth said. “ As well as survey what's going on here. If you could take me and Gwen, it would be much faster than walking.”

“ Not a bad idea,” Gwen said. “ I could ride on top, if your wagon's roof'll support it. Not much of a sniper's perch but I'll take what I can get.”

“ Roof'll support ya,” Kyrie said. “ You can ride for free; I still owe you for keeping Bill off my back.”

“ What do you want us to do, boss? We could come with you,” one of the watch with Gwen said, a heavyset older woman with a single materia in her armlet.

Gwen shook her head. “ Three people's nothing for a draft chocobo, even with a wagon, but all of us would be a bit much. Besides, all this commotion's going to wake up the little monsters here, and some of them might decide they want to move away from it- and into town. Sandy, Cindy, Mindy, I need you three here at the gate, you shoot your magic at any damn thing that moves that isn't me, farm boy, or Kyrie, you hear me?”

“ Sure, boss!” said the middle sister, tallest of all, rubbing her bangle.

“ Should we wake up the rest of the watch?” the youngest asked.

“ Good idea,” Gwen said. “ They might attack the walls, too, or try to slip in somewhere we're not expecting. New tasks- Sandy, you run the fastest, get those long legs hauling ass. Get patrols moving- it's all hands on deck!”

The long-legged sister nodded before taking off, Gwen turning to the two remaining fraternal triplets with a fierce grin.

“ Heh, always wanted to say that,” she said. “ Cindy, Mindy, guard the gate until your sister gets back- but first, help me up, I can't jump like the Champion over there.”

Sephiroth resisted rolling his eyes at the title. He'd never asked for such a thing; but someone had started using it and... well. Some ideas caught like fire with people, no matter how much he disliked it.

( He was just a man. If he said it enough, he'd believe it.)

“ You hop on board too!” Kyrie said, patting the seat next to her, distracting him from his thoughts. “ I'd prefer you riding shotgun anyway- well, riding scythe, I guess? Whatever.”

Sephiroth nodded. “ Not a bad idea. If the monsters are agitated... they _probably_ won't attack a chocobo, but the fires might make some of them desperate.”

He popped his weapon's blade out before he got on board, tapping the butt of his staff hard against a stone to activate the mechanism. The long blade popped out of its holder before sliding horizontal and locking in place, the crowd oohing and awwing.

( The flower boy had no idea why people reacted like that; it wasn't like people didn't know he had the weapon. He'd had this thing built years ago; they should be used to it, by now.)

Weapon ready, ignoring the sussuration of _Champion's gonna fix it_ and _He's got this_ , Sephiroth climbed aboard the front seat as Gwen clambered onto the roof, assisted by her grunts, getting her sniper rifle ready to clear the way if trouble should come.

“ Here we go!” Kyrie said once they were on, snapping the reins she held in red-gloved hands, her own private joke about being caught red-handed. Old Mireille squawked a complaint as the draft chocobo got them moving, the great bird surefooted even in the dark, wagon rattling along behind them.

“ You know,” Gwen said as they passed the town gate, her voice slightly buzzy with the rattling, “ the good news is, if I have any kidney stones, this'll pulverize'em right out of me.”

Kyrie's laughter rang out as they passed the dim light of town, passing the gate and the firebreak he'd finally convinced the town council to build three yearsa go. Sephiroth's alien eyes adjusted rapidly, and with her night vision goggles, Kyrie could see just fine; he wasn't sure how Gwen was going to see to aim her rifle. Hopefully there wouldn't _be_ any trouble.

The dump was alive with movement and noise both. Small fires sat here and there, petering out as they hit metal or resilient stone, but the fires were driving the local monsters out of their homes and making them angry.

“ It'll be all night with this,” Gwen said. “ Hope your church is well-defended, Champion, or we're going to be fighting our way in.”

“ Monsters do not approach it,” Sephiroth said. “ It will be safe.”

“ That's creepy,” Gwen opined. Kyrie snorted, left hand unconsciously going to the Goddess statue she wore about her neck and over her racing jacket, the one item of clothing she owned she had paid for honestly.

“ It's holy,” Kyrie shot back, but before an argument could begin, they heard noise above them.

“ Gya haa haa haa!”

“ What the fuck?” Gwen said, as that horse laugh echoed all about them.

Sephiroth shared the thought, looking up towards the sound's source, seeing... a man in a parachute? No details at this distance, but he was sailing past them, aiming for Wall Market, if the flower boy's sense of direction was telling the truth. His other senses said it was just a normal human, albeit one that was sailing overhead at high speed with a parachute.

The Planet sent a surge of ugly hate to him at the sight of the man, hate clear as the blue sky. He'd only felt the Planet hate someone so strongly when he was looking at...

“ A Shinra executive,” Sephiroth said quietly, half-unaware he'd spoken at all. The Planet sent a bolt of affirmative feeling before going back to hating the man, who sailed off in the darkness.

“ That's... who?” Kyrie asked, and Sephiroth shook his head.

“ Not important,” he said. “ But that's probably why things are falling from above onto us.”

“ Want me to shoot him?” Gwen asked. The Planet sent a very strongly supportive urge to him, but the flower boy waved it off.

“ It would cause more trouble for Sector 5 than it solved,” he said, and the Planet was very disappointed with him.

_You know I'm right_ , he answered it, irritated. _Besides, Gwen probably couldn't make the shot anyway, in the dark with both her and her target moving; more likely the bullet would come back down in Sector 5 and kill someone._

The Planet grumbled in his mind like an irritated kid, knowing it was wrong but still mad about it.

They continued, the Planet still grouching in the back of his mind. The journey was tense- he caught glimpses of little monsters rummaging about, animals shifting dens in the wake of the fires, which were scattered everywhere. Pieces of superheated metal, tiny shards, lay in pieces all over the junkyard, and the fires were centered on them.

“ Did all this fall from the Plate?” Gwen asked. “ There's no rhyme or reason or distribution pattern to any of this stuff; it's scattered randomly. Unless parachute guy was tossing them down.”

“ I think it fell from the Plate,” Sephiroth said.

They were quiet after that, as a single group of hedgehog pies, the weirdly-named gremlins of the dump, debated assaulting them... but then the group heard the heavy mechanical footsteps of a robot, and the hedgehog pies scattered. The bizarro mechanical abominations that sometimes spontaneously formed in the dump's filth had, ironically, rendered them safer, particularly since they never saw it; it approached close enough to be heard, rattling the piles of metal, but then left, stomping off into the distance, following whatever garbled code had reactivated to give it some semblance of a brain. Sephiroth was just glad the things made so much noise; he never could track mechanical things with his other sense, and for all that he feared the implications of that power, he liked the awareness that came with it.

As they almost reached his church, they found a large burned area, and in the center of it, caught on the upraised blades of three bulldozers, what looked like a large disk and the dismembered torso of a robotic man.

“ The fuck?” Gwen asked, once more saying what they were all thinking.

“ Shinra tech,” Kyrie said. She should know, she'd been stealing parts for years. “ Looks new... one of Scarlet's, I'd say. That disk is mostly jets and engines, I'd bet it's a hoverpad, but... why they'd build just a torso, I've no idea.”

“ Why'd they drop it on us?” Gwen asked.

“ Don't know,” Kyrie answered.

The chocobo carefully stepped around fallen chunks of metal walkway as they drove past the collapsed robot, which looked oddly enshrined where it sat on the bulldozer blades- as if they were lifting it up to be venerated.

Weird.

His church, thankfully, was fine- save it had a hole in its roof, visible from the top of the slope you had to descend to reach it.

_A hole..._

“ Shit, looks like your church got hit,” Gwen said, but he barely heard her over an unusual kind of _panic_ rising in his chest, a sense of dream and reality running together, not helped by the Planet blaring its alarm full blast at him again.

“ Faster, Kyrie,” Sephiroth said, and something in his tone meant she did not make a quip or question him, but merely urged Mirielle to higher speeds. The chocobo complied, and when they reached the front door, Sephiroth did not wait for her to stop, leaping off with his scythe in hand, running for his door.

“ Wait up!” Kyrie said, but he nearly ripped the old door from its hinges with his free right, it _couldn't_ be. It _couldn't_ be.

There she was, sleeping beauty, laying amongst his flowers. In the peaceful darkness of his church, outlined only by a thin thread of moonlight that had snuck under the plate and through the hole in his roof, lay a woman in the shattered armor of a SOLDIER.

He stared for a long moment, long enough for Kyrie and Gwen to catch up with him.

“ You forgot your bag!” Kyrie said as she reached him, carrying said item, before skidding to a halt as she looked inside his church. “ The- that's a person!”

“ Yeah, that's a person,” Gwen said, then looked at the hole in his roof. “ Wait, did she- no fucking _way_ -”

“ Bag,” Sephiroth said, feeling numb. “ My- my bag; she's hurt.”

“ Hurt? She fell from the fucking _Plate_ she should be _mush_!” Gwen said, staring in wide-eyed disbelief. “ No, no, that doesn't- there's no way. That's just not possible.”

“ My bag,” Sephiroth repeated, and Kyrie, knocked out of her reverie, handed it to him numbly.

“ Fuuuuuuuuuuuck,” Gwen said, like air leaving a balloon. Her eloquent summation of the situation accompanied Sephiroth as he walked forward on unsteady legs, towards a woman he'd seen in a dream.

He knelt beside her. He put his scythe down in easy reach, materia ready to use, bag on his left, putting two fingers to her throat.

No pulse- not surprising, but in his dream she'd been alive, was he too late? His other sense picked up no life from her, either, though she felt... odd... to that sense. Maybe he should have taken off at once, maybe he wasn't supposed to talk to Gwen, should have brushed her off, hurried...

The skin underneath where his finger was touching _writhed_. No, no, in the split-second before he jerked his fingers away, he felt that it wasn't the _skin_ , there was something _under_ the skin, the thing the part of him that was no man had sensed. Like vines, or roots, crawling underneath...

The woman's body jerked, and she drew in a shuddering breath, as something moved underneath her flesh, like a parody of veins, moving before lying still.

“ Holy Planet's fucking hell, she's alive,” Gwen said, managing to blaspheme in four separate religions at once, a personal record. “ That- she's gotta be a zombie. Or a ghost.”

“ Minerva sacred, protect me,” Kyrie prayed breathlessly. “ Sephie, what is happening?”

“ I don't know,” Sephiroth said slowly. What... what had _that_ been? His senses were telling him, but they were using words he did not understand. A light like other adult humans, but different in some fundamental way. He'd never had a SOLDIER nearby when his alien perceptions were active, was this normal for a SOLDIER?

 _(Us,_ his cells whispered, but... what did that mean? Was she a relative of his? How would he even know if that was the case?)

“ What did you do?” Kyrie asked, plucking up her courage. “ What did her skin just do?”

“ I... I don't know,” Sephiroth said. He hesitated a second, then put his fingers to her neck again; but the writhing did not repeat, and he could sense an erratic, faint pulse, as she drew in shallow breaths. “ But she's still hurt. Kyrie, could you assist?”

Kyrie, the closest thing to a nurse he'd ever had, ran over, literally sliding on her knees the last little distance, and he called out for what he needed. He didn't want to move her, not after a fall like that- and his flowers were woven with healing magic anyway, this was as good as a bed in the makeshift clinic he'd set up in the community center.

Then to the work. Cure to keep her stable, the brute force of magic healing to provide a bedrock for the doctor's work. A quick check revealed that her bones and body had survived startlingly intact, save her left arm; that one had snapped in three places, in addition to popping out of its socket. Splints and bandages soaked in potion, aligning the flesh and bones, the wet snap of the shoulder bone going back in as it was meant to, Gwen standing guard at the door without being asked.

( When he'd suggested the town watch to the mean-spirited immigrant, he hadn't expected her to take to it so well; perhaps he had misjudged her.)

He had Kyrie hand him syringes and bottles, filling one with the other and tapping his old needles to clear them of air. Her veins, easy to find, the plunger gently squeezed to introduce chemical allies to her bloodstream, washing the syringe and needle out with pre-sterilized water before re-using them again. A general painkiller to ease stress, combined with anti-inflammatories to prevent any future swelling; a diluted mixture of potion and ether both to restore physical and spiritual health in slow increments. A little something to thin the blood, just a little, a weak anticoagulant; broken bones, particularly ugly breaks like the ones he'd just repaired, had a tendency to cause blood clots.

And after some deliberation, he gave her a single dose of the most precious medication he owned. He drew it very, _very_ carefully from its little round homemade bottle, the liquid strangely warm and red and _alive_ the way liquid should not be. It was something Kyrie had stolen five years ago and that he'd used sparingly in the years since, always hiding that he had it- a bottle of elixir.

True elixir it was, too, the original Cosmo Canyon concoction, which Shinra had never been able to replicate. Kyrie had taken in a great planned heist up on the Plate that he hadn't known about; she'd returned triumphant, with nothing more than the little bottle in her hands, a quarter liter of liquid life that she could have sold to anyone on the Planet for gil enough to retire to Mideel's beaches.

The greedy woman had not done that; she had, instead, put the bottle in his shaking and disbelieving hands with a smile.

( Payment, she'd said. Payment for helping her... and re-payment forgiving her all her sins. He hadn't known what to say, save that she had overpaid him; she had not been so bad, if she had been ten times worse this elixir would still have been payment enough. This bottle was worth... worth... there were no _words_ for the worth of it, the formula lost in Cosmo Canyon's destruction, a thing of myth and legend, sitting in his doctor's bag. Whatever doubt he'd had that she had changed had died that day.)

He hoped nothing he gave her was fatal for a SOLDIER, but he knew nothing of them or their makeup; he had to guess. They'd been human once, after all; surely they weren't that different.

( He had thought the same thing about himself, once or twice, and the reminder was uncomfortable at best.)

When his work was done, he leaned back, sighing. The distress of the Planet relented as her breathing eased; apparently this was what it had wanted him to do.

( Alongside that vision he'd had of his mother. Had that been a dream the Planet sent him? Or was she simply working for the Planet, like he was, had he inherited this task?)

“ So... what's next?” Kyrie asked. She pulled back- and Sephiroth noted she had a wallet in her hands. “ This... Tifa... wait, what the hell? This says Tifa Lockhart! It's a military ID, says SOLDIER 1st Class, Tifa Lockhart!”

She waved it at Sephiroth, who saw that, in addition to having only like, ten gil in it, the wallet had a plain purple ID, stamped SOLDIER, with her photo.

“ That can't be right,” he said. “ Tifa died right after the War. Her and Aerith were killed by Genesis.”

He kept up with Shinra; they were the Planet's enemy, after all. He'd join AVALANCHE if he could figure out how to do so, the group too secretive for him to catch hold of.

“ That's the official line, anyway,” Gwen called from the door, snorting. “ Used to be, anyway. Heard they changed it later, said the Western Alliance did it and Genesis died in the attack too. Whatever. Shinra's full of shit, you can't trust them; bet they faked her death so she could be a Turk.”

“ Isn't wearing a suit,” Kyrie said. “ Also, she doesn't look like she's enough of an asshole to be a Turk.”

“ That's fair,” Gwen said. “ They always have that smug ass air about them. Jerks.”

( Hiding atop a discarded crane nearby, Blast and Vicks, who were observing Sephiroth and listening in with a distance microphone, frowned.)

“ I... don't think she's with Shinra,” Sephiroth said. The Planet had wanted her to live too much.

“ On what basis?” Kyrie asked.

“ Call it a hunch,” he said, the phrase he'd used for years to deflect questions about his reasoning. Kyrie rolled her eyes; as his oldest friend, she'd heard that excuse before.

“ Fine,” she said. “ We gonna move her, or what?”

“ No,” he said. “ No point; I'd rather she lay somewhere she's relatively stable.”

“ Not like we have a real hospital down here,” Gwen said with a shrug. Sephiroth nodded ot her.

“ True. I'll let her stay here... you two leave. I'll watch over her.”

“ What about the monsters? Or fires,” Kyrie asked.

“ Yeah, I can't let you die on my watch, your mom would beat me to death,” Gwen said.

Sephiroth smirked before tapping his scythe.

“ I'll be fine,” he said. “ Though I would not mind if Kyrie would bring me back a coffee. Or three. I'll need to stay up tonight to keep watch on her vitals.”

There was more talk after that, but they left soon enough, Sephiroth keeping to his vigil, watching over this strange woman, wondering why she mattered so much.

( Outside, Blast and Vicks made ready to grab him, but the duo was stopped by the crackle of a radio; Vincent needed them to go find Heidegger, who had fallen to the slums, immediately, taking priority even over this private mission. Cursing, the duo took off, hunting the lost Shinra Head.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, Sephiorth's weapon is a scythe. He's a farmer, after all!
> 
> And it's literally the most edgy and gothy thing I could give the overdramatic fellow but still have it make thematic sense. 
> 
> It's also a reference to some of FFVII's development; Vincent's original weapon, before guns were decided upon, was a scythe. I'm using a LOT of development material for... IDEAS. Along with false rumors, which is where the Alpha-Leviathan is from; supposedly it was a superboss like Emerald WEAPON you could fight underwater. A myth, but a fun one, so I stole it.
> 
> A note on Kyrie Canaan and age:
> 
> We're told in the canon of FFVII's Compilation- specifically, The Kids are Alright- that Kyrie was one of Aerith's childhood friends, playing with her in the church, though they fell apart later on. This doesn't really jive with the timeline we're presented with; Aerith was five years older than Kyrie, which is a bit unrealistic for them to have been the kind of childhood friends they're implying. 
> 
> As part of my own personal quest to never write characters who are teenagers, I've aged Kyrie up; she's two years younger than Sephiroth, and the two were friends in their younger days. ( Yuffie is my one exception so far.)


	17. Sleeping Beauty, Awakening Amidst the Briar-Roses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tifa's back!
> 
> Now for AWAKENING and THOUGHTS on FANTASY WORLDS!

**Chapter 16**

**Sleeping Beauty, Awakening Amidst the Briar-Roses**

Tifa Lockhart dreamed a memory.

It had been... in the days after Zack. When she had mortally wounded that good man, then left Aeris to talk to him, to share whatever last things would pass between them; she had stepped away, to give them privacy.

Then Aeris had fled crying, unable to finish it, sobbing and sobbing; Tifa had taken over again, walked over to him and broken his neck, a kinder death than the lingering one he would have suffered. Lucrecia had requested they bring Zack's body back for analysis- or retain him alive if possible- but Aeris had begged her in whispers to burn it, unable to defy her mother and begging her best friend to do it in her stead.

She had done so; Zack had been her friend, too. Her best friend, besides Aeris, and... she had not wanted him to sit in some lab somewhere, experimented on. She had set him aflame, and watched until he was ashes, keeping only his sword to bring back as proof of his death.

( Burn him? But she has never had fire materia, she doesn't like fire _the ice and the fire and the mistake_ she didn't burn Zack, she didn't, she has never burned anything in her life _the ice and the fire and the mistake it's not my fault_ _the ice and the fire and the mistake_ )

She had taken responsibility, too, shouldered that burden for Aeris. When Lucrecia asked what had happened, Tifa claimed she'd burned him to ashes because he had been her friend, despite Aeris's protests. She'd gotten chewed out for disobeying orders, but Aeris had been so relieved...

...It was in those days that Tifa began to realize what was going on, what was... wrong. Lucrecia had been too angry, Aeris too afraid; there had always been an undercurrent there, but Tifa, whose father and mother had loved her, had been blind to how powerful it was until that day. Lucrecia's desire to deal with Zack had... personal... overtones. As if she was angry with her daughter's boyfriend for some reason... he  _had_ betrayed Aeris, had betrayed them all, but... 

But that hadn't been what it was about, or at least, Lucrecia had never mentioned Zack's treason. What it  _was_ about, Tifa could not parse, save a vague idea, born from Lucrecia calling Zack an... interference.

( Interfering with what?)

With Zack gone, SOLDIER had fallen apart. Aeris could not lead, not in her grief, and Tifa had been grieving too; Zack had been her friend, and nightmares of his snapping neck haunted her. In the void had come Shinra and bureaucracy... not that it had mattered. The War was ending at that point, and everyone knew it; Zack had been the last real obstacle to a total Shinra victory. Cosmo Canyon attempted to surrender; Heidegger led the army three weeks later that smashed it into a hole in th eground.

With its lead nation a corpse, the Western Alliance was dead. Long live Shinra.

...She remembered celebrating, trying to cheer Aeris up with their final victory. Knowing the War was over had been such a relief for her, she'd been so  _happy._ The right side had won, she'd thought at the time; the world was a better place, and she'd helped make it so.

...She had loved Shinra so much. Absurd to hear, now, but it was true. She had loved Shinra so much that, despite her Western origins, no one had ever questioned her patriotism. Shinra, Shinra, Shinra, that had been her loyalty and her faith and her creed for five long years.

If Tifa had ever had a God, the Shinra Electric Power Company was it.

And why not? They had taken a country girl, of no worth, of no name, and given her a chance to prove her worth... and when she had, they'd made her a hero. They had put her face and name on posters, fan clubs, merchandise, they had given her a chance to speak on radio and be heard by millions, they had invited her to dine with presidents and kings. They had made someone magnificent out of her, someone  _important_ , and they had valued her contributions to the cause. 

If Shinra was a God, then Tifa had claim to be direct beneficiary of its miracles; she was something like an angel for them, wasn't she? Taken in by Shinra and transformed into something more than human, given the corporate equivalent of a sacrament. They had baptized her, liquid mako for holy water, a seal of approval stamped on for the holy writ, and the officiating priest had been Hollander, the slimy, sleazy little man.

She was pretty sure he'd been staring at her breasts as she floated in the tank- and she'd been  _fourteen_ . Fucking freak. 

( If there was a single thought that united everyone at Shinra, it was this: fuck Hollander. If he hadn't been so useful in creating SOLDIER, Heidegger and Scarlet would have thrown him in a ditch, and President Shinra would have tossed in the first shovelful of dirt to bury him.)

But Hollander had been a moment's annoyance, the token bad guy on the heroic team, pushed aside as soon as she awoke. President Shinra as their wise leader, brave Heidegger to lead the human element of their army, the wonder of meeting Nanaki, a sentient thing that could talk and was not human. Then Aeris, and their fast friendship, the Valentines for extended family, and Angeal; had a man ever been named so well? It had been wonderful, a little family, for the girl whose father had been her last living relative, her letters to him full of praise for her new life.

And why wouldn't they be? She was a SOLDIER, part of the choir of angels in defense of their new God- and not just any one-winged angel, no, she was a seven-winged archangel, she defended them against powers and principalities. They resided in their warrior's heaven above the plate, Midgar rising high in the sky, only descending down to earth to do battle with evil.

And such enemies! The demons of the Western Alliance, who trained monsters to fight for them, who stole Shinra's holy secrets to make their own mockeries of SOLDIER in the mass-produced Ravens.

Oh, yes, they'd been angels indeed. The Plate's streets were paved with gold, and she had lived there, her salary paying for a lovely house, her share of marketing bringing in gil enough to swim in; and every step out of her door had brought paparazzi and press, fans and adoration. Shinra had given her power, and wealth, and glory, had covered her in blessings, and she had, in return, loved it, loved it with all her heart. Overblown as the comparison might seem, her time with SOLDIER, up until the very end, had been heaven.

It was hard to hate a thing that had given you so much.

Even when she started to... understand... she had blamed the War. The War, it had taken so long, done so much harm, it must have corrupted her paradise, the way it had corrupted Zack. That had been her thinking. Shinra was better than this. She had seen only Shinra's benefits, had not known the cost to people, had  _refused_ to see it. Scales on her eyes, she had been blinded by golden light, and failed to see what she had become responsible for.

At some point in her thoughts, she drifted towards consciousness, looked up, saw a man with blue eyes and white hair watching over her, with the calm patience of a curled serpent, passing a hand over her forehead. A scent of wildflowers, and the stirring in her skin  _hated_ him, she thought she heard a voice she knew say  _demon-devil-Calamity_ but then it slipped away and she slipped under, to strange dreams, half in the past and half present, continuity and tense vague suggestions and outlines.

...Her mind drifted to the day she spoke with Reeve Tuesti for the last time.

She remembered him well. Strong black goatee, hair slicked back, black suit on, the absolute pinnacle of the evil chancellor in every movie and theater play stretching back a century. His goatee was  _so villainous_ . He could have made a killing on the stage, playing bad guys.

Yet Reeve, who seemed oblivious to how others perceived him, had been one of the nicest men she'd ever known, equal to Cloud as he was now. A gentle fellow, Reeve was, passionate and outspoken, with a southern Midgar accent that gave his words a hearty brogue. A collector of toys, his office stuffed with plush, which was just weird when combined with how evil he looked.

It had been in that office that they'd spoken. He'd called her in, to her surprise; Urban Development rarely had much to do with SOLDIER, except to tell them what to defend.

So she'd come by tram from her expensive home, which Aeris was crashing in, so broken-up over Zack's death that she'd taken over Tifa's couch, unwilling to see anyone else. Tifa had nightmares of her own, but stayed strong for her friend, whose hurt was even worse.

Still, she would not lie- getting out for some air, away from Aeris's unending despair, had been nice. She'd left her fellow SOLDIER asleep on the couch to speak with the man, entering Shinra HQ with her ID, a quick flash before the robot let her inside.

Up the elevator, then, and off to his office, located in the records room. She was greeted on entrance by pictures of Reeve's mother, whose job he'd inherited, and his father, a cheerful house husband. Those portraits looked on a room that held a desk, a table, and many shelves; on the table was a smattering of robotic parts, but on the shelves... stuffed toys. So many. It was like being attacked by a rich kid's closet. A huge moogle with a megaphone, a big fluffy dragon, and his pride and joy, a mechanical cat-man sitting on his desk, who waved at her as she entered.

Tifa shuddered, even as she assumed a parade rest stance, second nature after so long in the military. Nibelheim ghost stories were all about possessed dolls; everybody knew you didn't make stuff in a human being's shape, not unless you wanted Lady Jenny to take offense. She didn't like human-shaped things, and if you had any, she'd possess them and come after your stupid ass. Stuffed toys of dogs and cats and all manner of life was okay, they said Lady Jenny liked animals and would let them be, but a human shape... even giving it a cat head didn't change the humanity of it. Ugh.

“ I see you're not a fan of Cait Sith!” Reeve said, chuckling amiably. “ You know, Mr. Wallace had the exact same reaction. I believe he called it a... let me see... 'fucking catbeast from hell.' I do believe I saw him trying to exorcise it when he thought I wasn't listening.”

Tifa smiled, shaking her head. After all Aeris's moping- and her own nightmares- it was nice to be around someone as upbeat as Reeve. “ We're Westerners, sir; puppets creep us out.”

( Was that why she remembered this, in the future? The change of pace? Why was she thinking about this now... what had she been doing? There was... a fall...)

“ Shame!” he said. “ He's a new model! I'm actually testing some tech out in him.”

“ Oh? What technology are you testing, sir?” Tifa asked. She had little practical schooling- a runaway of fourteen meant a dropout at fourteen, too- but being Aeris's friend for half a decade meant she'd had enough dinners with the Valentines that she'd picked up a smattering of knowledge of the sciences. 

“ Oh, just a little something I thought up,” Reeve said, patting the doll, which leaned into the touch (to Tifa's discomfort). “ It's to help paraplegics and war veterans who've lost limbs! This little fellow has a chip linking him to my brain; he'll do whatever I think for him to do, following my commands. Not just conscious ones, either! I designed it to be mostly subconscious, so we can use it to control robotics as unthinkingly and easily as we control our own limbs. Lucrecia did the surgery for me.”

“ Seems... dangerous,” Tifa said, thinking of how angry Lucrecia had been when Tifa had only a sword to show for Zack's death. She'd give her time to cool off.

“ It is,” Reeve admitted, patting his little creation, which leaned into the touch like an actual cat (which was super weird for  _several_ reasons.) “ Untested and experimental- which is why I refused to let anyone else be the first test subject. Lucrecia's been terribly helpful; she was very interested in my idea. Shame the link is mostly unstable right now, but the circuitry's built on an adaptable system; the longer it's attached to me, the better the connection will be! He'll follow my commands, do what I would do in individual situations, remember things better for me... all kinds of advantages.”

...She had to ask.

“ I don't want to sound rude, sir,” Tifa said, “ but... why is it a small man with a cat head?”

( In unison, Past Tifa and Present Tifa thought the same thing-  _that's a hell of a sentence._ )

Reeve paused, then laughed. “ Sorry! I suppose to a Westerner this must look rather... strange. This little guy is based on an Eastern tale from my home of Kalm; he's a Cat Sith! Well, it's properly called a  _Cait_ Sith... regardless, they're supposed to be little guys who steal the souls of the dead to become smarter. This guy's taking a part of my mind to get smarter; I thought it appropriate!”

Reeve chuckled, and the puppet mimicked his laughter, holding its stomach and shaking as if chuckling, though no sound came out.

“ Ah,” Tifa said, a non-commital kind of answer. That... just... every part of that was weird. It didn't help that the puppet was so fucking _creepy_ ; she was going to have nightmares about those soulless black eyes.

...Actually, if she did, she'd be grateful for them, it'd be better than... than what she'd been dealing with.

(the feeling of his neck snapping in her hands... she'd  _just_ been thinking about that, hadn't she? In the... tunnels... tunnels, mantis-serpents, two blond men, a gun, a beautiful sword)

“ At any rate, Miss Lockhart,” Reeve said, standing up straight, his puppet mimicking him on the desk, “ I'd like to ask your opinion on the President's son.”

“ Rufus?” Tifa asked. Reeve nodded. “ I'm not sure what you mean, sir.”

“ Do you think he's capable of leading the company?” Reeve asked.

“ I... sir, I'm not sure what you're asking,” Tifa answered, nonplussed. She hadn't paid much attention to the politics of the company. That had been Zack's job...

(Zack... his sword... she'd seen him recently, him and his sword, wrapped around the heart of fire, saving her, saving her, _Zack I'm sorry_ )

“ Rufus has... new ideas about the company's direction,” Reeve said, a bit awkwardly. “ I wanted to get a feel for your position and the position of SOLDIER. I wanted to speak with Ms. Valentine as well, but given the circumstances... I wanted to respect her privacy.”

_Most people do,_ Tifa thought bitterly. Everyone assumed that because Tifa had killed him, she hadn't _cared_ ; Aeris and Zack had been lovers, but he had been like a brother to her...

But that felt petty of her. Aeris had loved him. Tifa's love had been lesser, and she should just... shelve it, put it away somewhere, examine it later. She would grieve in her own time, and support Aeris for now.

“ I thank you for your discretion, sir,” Tifa said. Reeve nodded.

“ Err, speaking of Aeris, do you know _her_ opinion on Rufus? Or her mother's, perhaps?”

Tifa returned a raised eyebrow and the only response she could give to such a strange question. “ I wouldn't know, sir.”

The rest of the conversation had gone in that vein. Reeve had asked questions that didn't make sense, Tifa answered neutrally or in the negative. All about Rufus, about the _direction of the company_ , about _new managerial policies_. Company politics, a game Tifa had never played, and at the end of this opening sortie found she had no talent for. She hadn't understood what Reeve was getting at, and decided it didn't matter; she was a SOLDIER, she'd defend Shinra from any and all threats, the way she always had.

She'd left his office and went home, to be awoken from her own nightmares that night by Aeris' whimpers, her best friend pressing her face hard against the cushions of her couch, trying to quiet her sobs. Aeris had always tried to muffle the sounds of her grief, as if ashamed of them; she seemed to see being human as a personal moral failing, would apologize every time Tifa woke her from her nightmares or hugged her until the crying stopped. Just her way of dealing with pain, Tifa supposed. She still remembered the way Aeris' hands had trembled, had not _stopped_ trembling since Zack died.

( _They were trembling when she stood there, too, hands dripping with red, in Nibelheim, she- no, no, no, please, don't make me remember, let me forget, please_ )

Looking back on it now... she finally understood. He'd been trying to recruit her for Rufus' coup. He'd failed because he was an awkward scheme plotter and she was a clueless lump of muscle, both too damn dumb to come around to the real purpose of the meeting.

If she'd known... if he'd been able to tell her, if she could have understood... would she have joined him? And if she had joined him, would it have been enough?

Maybe that was the place where it could have been stopped. Maybe if she'd listened, back then, or if Reeve had been better at trying to recruit her, all of... all of this could have been avoided. Maybe that was all it would have taken. Rufus, trying to take over as a teenager, so much younger than his father but wiser in every way that mattered, with Reeve assisting him, alongside a scattered mess of the Turks.

But if she had joined him, if she had _understood..._ She was Tifa Lockhart, heroine of the War. Aeris would have went with her, her friend, her _best_ friend. All SOLDIER behind the two of them, and probably the Valentines, dragged in by their daughter.

What if it had been enough? None of this would have happened.

This was all her fault.

( She is guilty of so much already, this feels cruel to add to the tally; she... she  _did_ something... no, no, forget. Forget.  _You spread Shinra across the world, you did this to the slum dwellers, if Rufus is right you are assisting in the murder of the Planet; let it be enough, you bear so many burdens already. Forget._ )

She tried to go back. She tried to stay asleep; she tried to avoid her responsibilities, in that moment weak, wanting only to hide.

But that same voice, so familiar, whispering in her ear  _wake up_

( she breaches the surface)

-

She was really itchy.

That was her first thought, laying there. She was... super itchy. She felt like she'd been rolling in hay for a week.

Her eyes popped open. Above her was... a roof... with a hole in it. A bunch of holes. She blinked her mako-green eyes, the pupils narrowing to slits as the bright sunlight tried to laser them out of her head. She put a hand up, her muscles protesting every movement; she was in...  _ so  _ much pain.

She opened her mouth, and instead of a word, a dusty sort of sigh croaked out, like the ribbit of a frog who smoked six packs a day.

“ I have water,” came a voice from nearby.

She rolled her head towards that voice, her stomach leaping and lurching as dizziness washed over her from the movement. Her neck protested, too, her vertebrae contemplating revolution. Her eyes kept recording, and she saw she was in a church, the area set like a chiaroscuro painting; she lay amidst light and flowers, and all around her was darkness, only seeing the vague outlines of pews and a pulpit above her head. 

The flowers smelled like chocolate; she breathed deep of their scent, and her next breath came a little easier. They were... beautiful, vibrant green stalks and deep purple-black blossoms, triumphant little midnight suns, radiant and beautiful.

She breathed in again, closing her eyes, just eating up that smell, her breath a little easier, her pains a little less present.

When she opened them again- she wasn't sure how long she was out, sleeping peacefully, only calming darkness in her skull instead of troubling light- she stretched again, managing to sit up, muscles protesting once more... but it was muffled, and the dizziness when she moved was more manageable. Not out of the woods, not by a longshot, but she could see the yellow brick road now.

She opened her mouth again, dry tongue clicking on drier throat.

“ Here,” came a nearby voice, and a shadow stepped out of the darkness.

He was tall, dressed in black overalls and a black shirt. Long white hair framed a handsome face, itself set atop a muscular and slim form, more than merely pleasing to the eye. In his right hand he had a slightly beaten-up canteen in the classic, boxy Shinra style, from the War; in his left hand he bore a sickle, as tall as he was.

Even as she reached for the water, the sickle- and his grim aspect- made a memory click in her mind. She drank, and as the first rush of cool water irrigated the desert of her throat, the memory popped into view full-formed.

Cloud, and Rufus, talking of Grim Reapers and Lady Jenny, on the way to the Reactor.

She coughed, choked, and almost became the first SOLDIER to die to a canteen of water; but she forced it down, tried to cough out the bit that had got into her lungs, unconsciously handing the canteen back to the man standing over her.

“ Time- place-  _ hck! _ Sorry,” she said, spluttering a bit as she choked, mouth running too fast as it tried to mold her mind's questions into words.

“ Take your time,” the man said. She recognized him now; that flower boy she'd met on the Plate, after the  _ first  _ Reactor mission. “ If you are curious as to your location, you are in Sector 5. Specifically, you are in the dumping grounds of Sector 5, located in a church dedicated to some lost religion. You... appear to have fallen from the Plate.”

She looked at him, eyebrow raised as she finally got her choking under control. Gah, nothing worse than choking on water; hardest cough to get rid of.

“ I understand your skepticism,” the farmer said, “ but it appears to be the truth.”

She looked up again, at the hole directly above her, and all her memories came rushing back at once. 

“ I... I did,” she said, after a moment. Then she looked back at him, eyes narrowed, taking him in, taking in the doctor's bag next to him and her own disjointed recall of a gentle touch and the healing magic that smelled like wildflowers. “ You saved me?”

“ You were very badly injured,” he said. “ Do you know your name?”

“ Tifa,” she said. “ Tifa Lockhart.”

He shook his head. “ Ma'am... you've been dead for five years, by common knowledge...”

She took a deep breath and waved it off. There were other, more important matters to attend to. “ Shinra's lies. Mr... I'm sorry, I don't recall your name, but we met on the Plate, didn't we? You gave me that flower.”

He gave her a smile, a thin and small thing at the corners of his mouth, barely there- but warm. 

“ I didn't know you'd remember. But yes. My name is Sephiroth Gainsborough, Ms. Lockhart.”

“ Well, Mr. Gainsborough,” she said, struggling to rise up on legs that shook a bit more than she would like, but less than she feared, “ I thank you for saving my life. How... how long have I been here?'

“ Three days,” he said. “ Perhaps more before we found you, but given that other objects fell from the Reactor above us at around the same time we discovered you, I'd say only three days.”

Three days. Questions poured into her; she ignored them for now, breathed in, breathed out, the way Zangan had taught her. Three... three days. Could be worse. She could have  _ no  _ days, could have died in that fall. No reason to panic. It's time she didn't expect to have. Cloud and Rufus would be just as dead in a few seconds as they were right now, or just as alive; no need to rush, to act like a fool, to do anything but... breathe.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

When she felt she had a handle on herself, she turned to the man again, took an experimental step. Her leg held, and she took another; the other leg held, too. Okay. She did  _ not  _ feel like fighting, but she could move well enough, she supposed. Maybe throw a punch, if her guts didn't come spewing out of her mouth; the dizziness had lessened, but it was still there.

“ Okay,” she said. “ I... thank you. I don't have anything to repay you...”

“ I don't do this for repayment,” Sephiroth said. “ And if I did... I think you have already paid me. Reactor 5 no longer works.”

Oh. So he thought she was part of AVALANCHE, and apparently approved. Good. She would... carefully not explain she was an independent contractor, then. Yeah, that was a good idea.

Wow, no wonder she hadn't picked up that Reeve was wanting her to join Rufus. Even now, she was shit at social manipulation, too straightforward and honest.

“ That was me,” she said. She didn't mention the others; no need to blow AVALANCHE's cover. “ But now, I just want to get home. Can you point me to the trains?”

She also didn't mention her home Sector. If this man was questioned later, he wouldn't be able to give up anything.

“ I can escort you there personally,” the man said, before leaning over to a nearby pew and picking up a little folded piece of good leather “ Oh, here's your wallet- I'm sorry, my friend stole your gil before I could stop her.”

“ Wasn't much in there,” Tifa said, taking her wallet back. “ Hope she could afford a drink.”

“ She could not,” Sephiroth said. “ I will pay for your train ticket, if you need it. Or, if you need to travel more incognito, the same friend who robbed you has a chocobo wagon; once she's back from a job in Sector 7, she can transport you herself.”

Wouldn't be bad. Shinra didn't check the slum trains often but they might be on higher alert after this last job. A chocobo could go into the outskirts of the Wastes, where Shinra ran no patrols, swoop back in... slower, but safer. If she told her to take her to, say, Wall Market, that wasn't that far, she could go there and then walk back; the Crimson Wings were no threat.

Her leg twinged as she took another step. Okay, the Crimson Wings would not  _ normally  _ be a threat. She'd need to take more time to recover before getting into any fights.

“ Thank you,” she said, straightening up gently. “ I believe I can walk...”

She paused, a late realization finally striking her. She patted herself down- she wasn't wearing her armor  _ or  _ her gloves. She had on only the black shirt and black leggins she'd used as underclothes beneath her SOLDIER gear on the Reactor mission.

“ Where is my gear?' she asked. The farmer frowned.

“ My apologies,” he said. “ It was all... ruined. I have the pieces here. Your impact did none of it any favors.”

He pointed to a nearby pew, where the fragments of her equipment were laid out, her two materia sitting like gleaming eyes at the very end. She quickly went over to survey the damage, taking a few moments to study it all.

The SOLDIER armor had survived better than she'd have expected, was almost intact- well, as intact as it had already been. Her old armor had possessed so many cracks and broken pieces in it already that, when she fell, it had simply sundered along the old lines again; apparently her half-ass restorations and repair jobs had acted like the crumple zones of a car, snapping on impact and saving the actual armor plates. If she got time, she could rebuild her equipment, or maybe even pay someone who actually  _ knew  _ what they were doing this time.

Her gloves, though, were unsalvageable. Just wispy strips of leather and junk metal, the only things left of the scrap gloves that had gotten her all the way to Midgar from... from wherever she'd started from.

A headache cut off that thought, and she thought no more of it.

“ Do you have a bag or a wheelbarrow?” she asked, semi-joking. “ I need these armor pieces, but I can't haul them.”

“ I thought you might want to keep them,” Sephiroth said, pointing to the other end of the bench, where a simple cloth backpack sat besides a very basic iron bracelet. “ I had a friend bring a backpack. I also arranged for a simple bangle to be brought, to carry your materia in.”

He helped her place her armor pieces in the backpack, sure movements of his right hand to match the somewhat-shaky grip of her own two hands. When she was done, she slotted the materia into the wristguard and slipped it onto her right hand, casting an experimental cure on herself- and it felt good, it restored some of her strength. 

Yes... her body sucked the spell down, and as it sank into her muscles she felt a bit better. She'd probably be alright after a good night's sleep... and some heavy abuse of her healing materia. As a price to pay for falling from the Plate, it was very small.

She put the backpack on, and turned with a smile towards this kind stranger who had saved her.

“ AVALANCHE thanks you for your service,” she said, figuring he'd eat that up; a compliment like that was the least she could do for him, the guy had saved her life. He gave her a soft smile in return.

“ Good,” he said. “ Hopefully there won't be anything else to it. We've had a lot of excitement here these last three days.”

As if on cue, summoned by Sephiroth's accidental jinxing of their plans, came a voice from the Church door.

“ You're about to have more!”

Tifa and Sephiroth turned to the door, as in walked two people in fine suits that the ex-SOLDIER could have recognized in her sleep.

“ Turks?” Tifa said in confusion, and the bright, smiling woman in the front of the duo laughed as she held out a homemade grenade, her silent partner pulling out a strangely-shaped gun.

“ Yep!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And Turks.


	18. Pride of Lions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A new POV this chapter- it's Red XIII, folks!

**Chapter Seventeen**

**Pride of Lions**

Nanaki- Red XIII to those who were not his friends- stretched in his custom-made chair in his office, popping his back. The office was not so different from a human one. He had a desk, seats for guests, a nice window with a lovely view of Midgar's Plate. The walls were adorned with art, as was custom for any Shinra executive, much less a Head.

His was adorned more than most, in fact, his walls veritably dripped with culture. Nanaki considered art one of the greatest signs of civilization and intelligence, and he found that the sight of so much crafted work quelled any urges in human visitors to think him a savage animal. Each piece was made by a Red Lion, all things made by his people in the thirty-odd years of their new existence, reflections of a culture they were slowly reclaiming from archaeological digs and slowly creating from their new circumstances. Feathers and moon motifs, abstract patterns in dark ink, colored numbers to reflect the experiment numbers that had revived their people; all were present here, including the piece President Shinra liked best, the Shinra logo in his people's signature black claw-markings.

But the piece Nanaki liked best was the one made by his own son Baz, and it dominated the right-hand wall. It was his story, in those same abstract claw-markings, something Baz hadn't told him he was working on until it was finished, presented as a birthday present last year; a long painting, framed now in good Western grey oak, protected by heavy Shinra framing glass.

There at its beginning, his noble father Seto, tricked to his death by the weak humans of Cosmo Canyon, dying to save those cowards from the Gi. His mother dying of grief a few years later, Nanaki leaving the Canyon, only barely not a cub. His years of wandering, alone, until finally he found Lucrecia, represented as a curved crescent moon in white, her maiden name before she had married her adoring bodyguard.

( He'd always thought it appropriate. His people had a connection to the moon; of course a woman named Crescent would be their salvation. Nanaki did not truly believe in destiny, but sometimes, he would think back on that meeting, and... wonder.)

A sable Lion chasing the immaculate Crescent east, to stand before a great tower; Shinra, represented as a gold coin in the tower's top, the Moon and the Lion before him. Blood, from him, drawn to make new cubs in glass tubes, his people reborn. The War, where they fought fiercely for Shinra, repaying their life debts; the last event, Nanaki himself, once more at Cosmo Canyon, killing that false guru Bugenhagen to avenge his father at last, the circle of his life complete.

Good memories. Good art, too. His son had a true talent for painting, and Nanaki could not be prouder of him. They  _ needed _ that, more than they needed warriors or mages; they had fighters aplenty, what they  _ needed _ were the other things that made a people and a civilization  _ complete _ . Baz's aesthetic sensibilities were the start of it; more was needed, but it was a fine start, and it wasn't like Red didn't have time. He'd rebuild his people, and spit in the Planet's face at the same time.

He stretched again in his chair. He  _ really  _ should get up and check his schedule, but he didn't want to. He'd arrived at the office early; maybe too early. He was still a bit sleepy. Maybe just a nap... 

... _ Ugh _ ... no, he had work to do. The teenage Red Lion forced himself up. No, even at the tender young age of fifty-three, he had work to do. 

...Well, fifty-three was young for  _ him. _ They'd had to speed up his people's development, the vatborn Red Lions living on human timelines; his son and his daughter were older now, biologically, than he was. A horrible necessity; they needed more Red Lions,  _ now _ , couldn't afford to wait, it'd be a few generations yet before they could let more natural lifespans take over.

( He had signed off on this early death for the first generations; knowing he would see his children die of old age before he even reached his adulthood... that was simply going to be a torment he would have to carry, his own private punishment for what he'd done to them.)

Discipline warred with desire for a few moments longer before he sighed and rose up. He leaned his head into the rig that held his PHS system, a headset designed for use without hands; he just had to flip down the microphone to talk, and flip it back up to end the call. Then he repositioned himself on his custom seat, in front of his desk computer, settling into a kind of lounging position on the chair, not unlike the way the more savage hunting cats of the North would perch on tree branches with a fresh kill. The keyboard dangled under the desk on a long metal shelf, perfectly angled to where his front paws would reach.

It'd taken a lot of work to figure out how a Red Lion could sit at a desk. The considerable differences in physical build between his species and humanity meant “sitting” wasn't exactly a thing a Red Lion could  _ do,  _ not without giving themselves fascinating and crippling spinal deformities.

Further work had occurred to create the keyboard in front of him. It was designed to be durable, and with large buttons; while Red Lion paws were much more dextrous than they looked, they still did not approach the flexibility or versatility of human  _ hands _ . While Nanaki generally wasn't jealous of humanity, despite his admiration of it, he had to admit- hands made him jealous as all get out. Such versatile things.

( He hoped Scarlet's idea worked; the harness she'd proposed would give him hands at last... though he didn't know  _ why  _ she'd also designed it to look like wings. Brilliant engineer, but her flair for drama was a bit disconcerting.)

Tragic lack of hands or not, intelligence yet provided answers. The keyboard was designed to use the two-claw typing methods Nanaki and, of all people,  _ Hojo  _ had come up with, the vicious sadist of a scientist surprisingly pleased by the strange but necessary task of figuring out how a Red Lion could use a computer. He'd always liked odd questions like that, and he'd  _ always  _ come up with an answer. No wonder Lucrecia had kept him around for so long; he had been terribly useful, in those early days. 

She'd even considered his genes worth preserving, though the man himself obviously had to be discarded. Too loose, too sadistic, he'd had no limits, and it made him much dumber than he would have been with even a little discipline. He had no limits; and limits, they were what kept you from doing something stupid. Without them, you descended into shrieking idiocy- like Hojo's ludicrous idea to breed Nanaki to that Cetra Gast had somehow found. Lucrecia had laughed herself sick, thinking of all the reasons  _ that  _ would never have worked.

Not least of all that Nanaki would never have done it. He'd done many terrible things, for his own cause and for Lucrecia's, but rape was beyond the pale... and he  _ hated  _ Cetra anyway. He wouldn't have touched her even if she'd been willing. Cetra, the Planet's favored folk, its precious little pets, who got to have their  _ cities  _ while his people  _ died _ ...

No, he had no interest in Gast's widow. The extent of his interaction with her had been during her escape, when she'd hurled him through a window and broken his legs with magic while he tried to rescue Lucrecia's baby from her. Goddamned child-stealing Planet-pet witch.

( He'd never failed his friend so badly as he had that day; the knowledge that her son had been taken, and that he hadn't been able to save him, had hurt worse than his legs had. It had destroyed her, for a while.)

Despite his odd ideas, though, Hojo  _ had  _ been valuable. He was still being useful now, even despite the fate Vincent had so gleefully subjected him to. The bulky computer mouse that sat next to the keyboard had been another one of Hojo's ideas, designed to deal with the greater strength and different ergonomics of a paw as compared to a hand. Nanaki put his paw on the smooth plastic, and on his rather barebones desktop, clicked on his scheduler. He knew most of his appointments today, but willpower and discipline couldn't entirely overcome the deficiencies his somewhat hormonal teenage body induced in his thinking; the scheduler made up for his terrible memory with appointments.

His scheduler popped open after a moment to load, listing his tasks in chronological order. Nanaki ran down the list. Not much early on today save paperwork; then lunch with his two children, Baz and Lin, alongside their mates and cubs. He'd get to play the role of doting grandfather, by far the most pleasant of the many roles he played. That would be nice.

Then an appointment afterwards...

Nanaki couldn't keep a growl from slipping out. Oh, hell, Hollander wanted to ask him something. Probably another attempt to make Red Lions into SOLDIERs, which... admittedly had some promise, but it required him to talk to Hollander, which no one wanted to do. Hollander was the worst person who worked at Shinra, and everyone knew it.

Besides, what would Red Lion SOLDIERs be useful for? SOLDIER itself wasn't all that necessary anymore. What would they even  _ do?  _ Who was left to fight?

...Still... getting his people to integrate into more and more of Shinra was a good idea. They had a precarious position, and Nanaki did not want to bet everything on his friendship with Lucrecia and his inclusion in her little group; he could always die, after all. Red Lion SOLDIERs would give his people strong fighters and let them infiltrate yet another part of the company that ruled the world.

His people had been on the edge of extinction. He wouldn't allow that to happen again, and not for a reason as simple as putting all his eggs in one basket.

So he squared up his shoulders, sighing. His duty to his people meant he'd  _ have  _ to subject himself to Hollander. The slob of a man would probably inflict three racist sentiments on Nanaki in his opening statements, layered with the heavy air of condescension Hollander gave everyone he met, and then the rest of the talk would be worse. Between tossing in his unwarranted and derogatory commentary on the human women he worked with, ranting about how much smarter he was than everyone else, and making demands of Nanaki- and the odd smell of rotting apple juice that always clung to the man- today was going to prove to be  _ terrible _ .

Hollander was an  _ asshole _ .

...Maybe he could convince Lucrecia that Hollander wasn't _that_ useful. He was alive only because Lucrecia couldn't be bothered with something as unimportant as SOLDIER right now... _surely_ she'd give Nanaki leave to gut the man. It'd been years since he'd done an assassination with his own two paws, instead of putting in an order for one with Vincent.

When even _was_ the last time he'd personally gotten his hands dirty? Five years ago, Nibelheim? Damn. For all that his great duty had aged him before his time, he still _was_ a teenager at heart; he should go get his paws dirty, kill something. Starting with Hollander's stupid ass.

...Ugh, no. Pleasing as that fantasy was, he couldn't. He'd shredded his share of Shinra scientists, but they couldn't afford to lose Hollander just yet. Besides, it'd interfere with Scarlet's bet.

( Her and Heidegger had differed on how Lucrecia would finally deal with Hollander, when he got on the patient woman's last nerve; Heidegger thought she'd turn him into a monster, Scarlet was convinced she'd turn him into a robot. Nanaki figured both were wrong; Hollander didn't deserve anything so complicated. He figured she'd just ask Vincent to shoot the guy.)

She'd deal with him in her own time- Shinra obviously frowned on open assassination, but given it was _Hollander_ , Lucrecia'd be given a pass so long as she made some minimal effort to make it look like an outside attack. The President would probably give her a medal for the public service.

Still, regardless of how Lucrecia finally swatted the gnat that was SOLDIER's director, she was not going to be doing it in the next three hours, so he'd just have to subject himself to the man. Once the groundwork was laid, he could fob the job off on whichever of his (male) employees had screwed up most recently.

Maybe he'd go on vacation. His daughter had been bugging him about going to New Wutai, where she lived now. He could take a couple of weeks off, go enjoy the surf and sun, see the grandkids, maybe get some hunting in. Claim a few bounties; he _was_ technically still a Turk, after all. Maybe he'd ask Vincent if there was anything needed doing in New Wutai while he was there. He always enjoyed pleasure best when mixed with business.

He made a note on his scheduler for an empty period tomorrow; _plan vacation._ Something pleasant to do, after today. He'd toss his plans past Lucrecia first, though he doubted she'd deny him, then send the request to the President.

But... today, first. Paperwork now, lunch with kids, meeting with Holalnder, and then just... drown himself in a hot shower. Maybe go through the decontamination rooms in the labs.

He pushed the intercom button.

“ Mr. XIII?” came the voice of his secretary outside, one of the few humans who worked under him. His Department had been entirely human at the start, since the first new generation of Red Lions had been literal newborns and obviously incapable of doing any work; but as they reached their rapid adulthood, he'd replaced the humans with Red Lions. Practicality, rather than racism, had compelled the decision; Red Lions should decide on issues involving their race.

For all the great debt he owed Humanity, and the love he felt for them as saviors of his kind, at day's end the fate of Red Lions needed to be determined by themselves alone.

Still, he'd left the best in their places, and made sure he had a few human employees even after those hard-working folk had retired. Competence was valuable regardless of species, and if he had a few humans in his Department, it made it harder for the others to argue against placing Red Lions in theirs.

“ Barretta, have the cooks prepared that key sega wat I requested for lunch today?”

“ Of course, sir,” Barretta responded. “ I made sure myself. You requested it be made relatively mild, and I passed that on to the chefs.”

“ Good,” he said. “ I like the full flavor of spices, but my daughter's nose is more sensitive than mine. Keep any visitors from bothering me and hold all calls unless it's another Head or the President; I've got to see Hollander later, so I think I'm gonna take a sabbatical from people for a while.”

Barretta was a woman of far too much class to say what she thought, but her tone was noticeably a bit frostier when she said, “ Will do, sir. Good luck with... the professor.”

“ I'll need it,” Nanaki replied, before shutting off the intercom. He moved the mouse over to his paperwork- digital, of course. Computers made paperwork possible for Red Lions; typing it up was much easier than using a pencil.

How would  _ that  _ even work? Even Hojo had thought it impossible, and he had put the “mad” in “scientist.” Nanaki had pushed hard for Shinra to have an internal network containing all their paperwork, a necessity if Red Lions were going to work for the company. He was not going to have his people be disposable foot soldiers; they would be part of every piece of Shinra, even the executive branch, but that meant everything had to be keyboard-accessible.

In this quest, besides Lucrecia, Vincent, and Scarlet, he'd had an unexpected ally in Mr. Wallace, the Urban Development Head. When he'd asked why the man was supporting his efforts, Mr. Wallace had claimed that he had atrocious handwriting and would prefer to have everything typed up for clarity; he had said it with a sheepish grin, claiming to be more of a hands-on guy than a paperwork man, and that a computer would at least keep his work legible.

And it was true, the man's handwriting _was_ shit... but... there was something about Mr. Wallace Nanaki couldn't quite sink his teeth into. Lucrecia had flip-flopped on him, half the time thinking he was a genius fooling them all, the other half convinced she was seeing patterns that didn't exist.

For what it was worth, Vincent's Turks had found nothing... but then again, that bug they'd placed in his room had been destroyed three months later. An accident, it looked like, Mr. Wallace bumping it while he was moving things about in his office and then stepping on it, but that was so _convenient..._ but then again, what man, knowing he was being watched, would tolerate it for three months?

..Bah. Let Lucrecia deal with it. He had files to get to.

For the next hour, Nanaki did paperwork. A joint request from Palmer on behalf of the Turks, asking for more Red Lions to patrol Rocket Town, and find that damn rebel flyer; he granted the request, reassigning a hunter-killer pack from the Golden Saucer to the area. The space station was too valuable to Lucrecia to lose because some foul-mouthed fighter pilot was strafing the rocket launches, and the Saucer Slayer wasn't a high enough priority to justify the manpower waste... lionpower waste?  _ Personnel  _ waste. Yes, that was good. It didn't justify the  _ personnel  _ waste.

A request from his own Department, an itemized expenses list for his department's food costs, needing his signature before they sent it to central accounting. Expected, already calculated for, well within budget. He signed with the computer pad, a program turning it into a pencil for a second, giving it the scribble he'd come up with for a signature- not the worst “hand”writing he'd ever seen, but up there with Mr. Wallace's.

A response to his own request to the Public Safety Department, asking for more funding to pay for Red Lion armor. Heidegger had granted it, without even quibbling, to his surprise. Then again, maybe he hadn't been in the mood for

Another request from the Turks, Vincent asking him his opinion on a possible third to join Vicks and Blast on his top team. Nanaki  _ had  _ been a Turk, after all, during the War, when he'd been assigned to keep an eye on Aerith, and Vincent trusted his opinion.

He pulled up the file, looked at the photo and the name. Heavyset Midgar guy named Wedge Wexley. Known family: mother and father deceased, but a little brother, named... Kwedge.

Wow. Whoever had named these two should go to jail. Perhaps Wedge was seeking entry into the Turks only so he could get a new codename.

( Kwedge was also escaping a bad name; a sidenote indicated Wedge's sibling had recently applied for hormone treatments and a rename to Syal, an uncommon but not unknown feminine name of Kalm origin.)

This was Wedge's third try to get into the Turks. Apparently, according to Vincent's notes, Wedge had grown up with Blast and Vicks, but they'd separated when Blast had cajoled Vicks into trying out for the Turks with her and the duo had passed. They'd apparently kept in touch, though, and while Wedge was a volunteer at a veterinarian's clinic, Blast had encouraged him to work out and try for the Turks; he had applied three times, once each year when the trials opened.

This was the first year he'd passed his physicals. He'd done  _ very  _ well on the pure strength tests, and could move a lot faster than you'd expect a guy that big to be able to; though, like all big men, he suffered stamina problems. He had  _ barely  _ passed the endurance test. A sprinter, not a marathon runner.

So... physicals passed, but that didn't explain why Vincent was looking at him as a candidate to join Blast and Vicks. Nanaki ran over a sidebar listing his talents. Good working knowledge of guns and explosives, favoring a grenade launcher in the trials, but Vicks was a better gunman and Blast a better explosives expert. Some tech knowledge, but again Blast had him beat in that area. Decent physical fighter, but Vicks was far superior.

The last skill was underlined for emphasis.  Excellent interpersonal skills. A description followed of Wedge's talent for information gathering, which was... surprisingly extensive, despite Vincent's usually terse writing. From him, this short paragraph was the equivalent of a monologue, and all of it was favorable.

It also explained why Vincent wanted to put him on the team. Efficient as Blast and Vicks were, Nanaki had to admit, they weren't very good at  _ talking _ . They were excellent at almost everything else- non-lethal capture, sabotage, sheer brutal violence, when necessary- but negotiation and passive information gathering? Not so much. Vincent was probably gambling that, since Wedge was already their friend, they'd listen to him in those situations and let him take charge, adding his skills to their other considerable talents and expanding their toolbox.

They could probably compensate for any inexperience on Wedge's part as well. The duo were  _ good _ ; he could only think of a single mission they'd ever screwed up, the job down in Wall Market three years ago. That had, admittedly, been a  _ hell  _ of a screw-up. It hadn't been just a regular Turk job, either, but a favor for the youngest member of Lucrecia's little group; the search-and-retrieval had gone belly-up so badly Blast had been forced to bombard the area with every explosive she had to cover their tracks, demolishing a significant chunk of real estate.

Still, their upfront willingness to admit to their mistakes, and previous good service, had meant their punishment had been fairly light, and they hadn't fucked up before or since. Wedge would be in good company to learn the trade, and they could use him for delicate work the rough duo had troubel with.

With that in mind, Nanaki signed off on Wedge, indicating he approved and thought he'd make a good third for the top Turk team, before moving on to the next item on his list. Hopefully the man could pick a better damn name.

The next paper was a letter from a wounded SOLDIER asking what would be appropriate funeral rights for his Red Lion partner, killed in the line of duty; Nanaki liked that, and set it aside. He'd write a personal response to that individual tomorrow, when he had some free time. Such conscientiousness should be given personal attention, and if there were going to be Red Lion SOLDIERs, that individual- Luxiere- might be a useful contact.

Luxiere... hadn't Scarlet mentioned someone by that name? He couldn't remember what it was about, but it made him think of Lockhart, of all people.

Weird. He put memories of his former SOLDIER comrade-in-arms behind him, beginning to look over a report on his investments in the Chocobo farms east of Kalm when his PHS rang. With a back foot, he reached up and swatted his microphone down with the same motion he'd use to scratch his neck.

“ A priority call, Barretta?” he asked, more out of formality than anything else. Barretta was a great secretary, despite her refusal to leave the slums of Sector 7. Hometown loyalty, he supposed.

“ It is, sir,” Barretta said. “ It's Head Lucrecia Valentine.”

“ Put her through,” Nanaki responded. Lucrecia had just gotten back from the West; he wondered what she needed doing. The next step of the plan was some distance in the future, if he wasn't incorrect...

“ Nanaki, dear, how are you?” came Lucrecia's elegant, smooth voice, so far from the semi-stuttering young woman he'd met all those years ago. “ I hope I haven't caught you at a bad time.”

“ Not at all, I was just doing paperwork,” he said. “ How was your trip back from the West?”

“ Pleasant, if slow.”

“ No seasickness?” Nanaki asked.

“ No, thankfully,” Lucrecia sighed in relief. “ The most recent medicine we developed seems to have counteracted any ill effects of my motion sickness.”

“ Excellent news,” the Red Lion replied. “ Soon you'll be zipping all over the world aboard airships.”

Lucrecia laughed quietly, a soft tinkling thing like glass test tubes clinking together. “ I must confess, I don't think I've got the courage to get on an airship just yet. The last time I was on one, I was so sick I feared I would die... then I was so sick I feared I _wouldn't_. Perhaps I'll wait and see if this new medicine has any side effects before I dare attempt it.”

Nanaki snorted. “ Cowardice? How unbecoming of you!”

She laughed again. “ I accept the charge,” she replied. “ But enough about me. Today is going to be a _very_ special day for you. I can hardly believe myself what we've found.”

“ Oh? Scarlet finally get my hands done?”

“ Close, but no- this is even better,” she said, detached tone fading as her excitement grew. “ Come on down to my lab; shame I couldn't have timed this for your birthday, but it's a present I imagine you'll be glad to get regardless!”

“ I'll be down there in a minute,” he said, smiling despite himself. What in the world had she found?

“ Can't wait!” Lucrecia answered, hanging up. Nanaki grinned to himself; she was years from the young girl she'd been, but every now and then, she'd get excited and you could hear that old pep in her voice.

After arranging with Barretta to hold all calls until his meeting with Lucrecia was over, he hooked his headset back on his rig, slipping it off, and then hopped off his chair. Quickly stretching, he headed out his office, the automatic doors a godsend; as one might imagine, doorknobs were a bit of a hassle for a Lion, though not an insurmountable one.

Through his Department he strode, the other Red Lions giving him an acknowledging nod of their heads, the newer hires not able to hide the awe in their eyes at seeing the Lion who had saved their entire race, from whose blood all their bodies were drawn, progenitor of all their race. He accepted their awe as his due; a fine reward, for all he had done.

Then to the elevators, rising up to briefly tap the button for going up. His department was on floor 44; Lucrezia's lab was on three separate floors, but her main lab was floor 66. Inside the elevator were a few people heading up, including Freyra, a former Turk like himself, and currently one of Scarlet's favorite weapons testers. She was idly reading something on a clipboard, in-between scratching at where her artificial leg and flesh met.

She gave him a nod as he entered, stepping back to give him room as he went to the buttons. He reared up and put his good eye to the retinal scanner on the elevator's buttonpad.

“ Mr. XIII, confirmed,” came the computerized voice. “ Authorization for restricted floors confirmed.”

He delicately tapped the buttons for Lucrecia's lab- floor 66.

Up, up, they went, individuals getting off on various floors, only Freyra staying past the cut-off point of floor 59; she got off on floor 64, the Recreational Facility for the company's top people. After that, Nanaki was alone.

“ Floor 66,” came the computerized voice, and the doors opened up on the sterile white of the labs.

It was something like a medieval grand hall- a large, open space full of tables- but the only food they were feasting on here was knowledge. The walls, tables, and almost everything in the room was painted in sterile white, necessary lines and warnings marked in deep pink verging on red. Each “table” was actually a workstation, a dozen of them in this room alone, each centered on a specific task and supplied accordingly.

Cabinets and lockers lined the walls, gunmetal gray almost looking black in the midst of all the white, each full of parts for repair, extra equipment if something broke, and additional resources should a researcher require them, a toolshed with everything they might need. Lucrecia spared no expense in her laboratories; every gil she put in was repaid tenfold, after all. It was just good sense.

The workers here knew it, too; they moved efficiently, with devotion, focused on their tasks. Lucrecia did not tolerate stupidity or laziness, but she richly rewarded effort and diligence; other than Mr. Wallace's own workers, whom he paid exceptionally well for some reason, Lucrecia's were the highest paid in the company.

Just another investment, like the cutting-edge equipment; good scientists were rare.

The workers saluted him as he passed, save a few who waved at him, individuals he knew slightly better. He greeted them, but only briefly; they were back to their work at a moment. Lucrecia gave her workers two more breaks than were standard at Shinra, amounting to a good hour more of free time on a workday; in return, she didn't much tolerate goofing off when one _was_ on the clock. Diligence, that was the watchword.

Each workstation was devoted to a specific task, like individual plots in a garden. He passed a bumper crop of scientific advancement: here a group coming up with a way for space suits to self-seal, there research into new propellants that could be used underwater. A new method of automatic injectors, better detectors for veins and arteries; a new kind of night vision goggle. Food crops that might grow in Midgar's wastelands; research into more efficient food for racing chocobos.

Most of the research done here was like that; nothing dramatic, no, that wasn't Lucrecia's way when she could help it. Lucrecia disliked high-risk, high-reward stunts; they felt too much like leaving things up to _luck,_ which was the dirtiest four-letter word the woman knew.

Steady, concerted effort, to grow one's power and knowledge steadily and surely... that was how Lucrecia did things. Given the benefits that had accrued to him over the decades, Nanaki saw the wisdom... though Lucrecia often had to remind Scarlet of it.

( A failing of youth, he surmised; once her first few decades were under her, she'd calm down.)

He walked down the long hall of this orchard growing trees of knowledge, seeking its Creator. At the room's end was his goal- a set of stairs, leading to Lucrecia's personal laboratory, the edge whose cut bled technology all over Shinra. It loomed over the smaller labs below, the stairs leading to her door, voice-code locked.

Those stairs were guarded by a 3rd Class Soldier, whose purple gear stood out like a visual punch in the room's endless white, and who appeared to be fighting a losing battle with boredom- up until he saw Nanaki, and his eyes lit up.

“ Mr. XIII!” Roche said cheerfully, a big smile on the excitable goon's face. “ Lucrecia said you'd be here soon- head on up!”

“ Punishment detail again, Roche?” Nanaki asked. “ What'd you do this time?”

“ Backflipped a motorcycle over a helicopter,” Roche said without a hint of shame. “ Made it, too! So I don't know _why_ I'm in trouble, I didn't even break anything this time!”

Nanaki chuckled but headed up the stairs. “ Stay classy, Roche.”

“ Always, Mr. XIII!” Roche called, as Nanaki reached the door.

“ Nanaki Red XIII,” he spoke to the mike.

The door hissed open a second later, onto... a living room. The first part of the lab didn't much look like one; it looked like a house. There was a small kitchen with a stove and a refrigerator, a fold-out bed, and a couch before a small table, which currently hosted a bottle of the good Midgar red she favored as a wine. She even had a TV and a little radio, along with a few books, mostly popular science fiction.

When she was working on something and didn't want to go through the hassle of leaving the Tower and going to her richly-appointed flat on the Plate, she used this front part of her lab as a home away from home.

Lucrecia herself was currently sitting on her couch, hair up in the great ponytail she'd been wearing since before some of her employees had been born. The only change in that hairstyle had been replacing the yellow ribbons she had once worn with pink ones, which she told others was her memorial for her war heroine daughter. An immaculate white labcoat, worn over a sable shirt and pants, ending in plain, practical black shoes. Her earrings were small multicolored daggers, cerulean hilts and crimson blades connected by a transparent crosspiece; the rosegold of her wedding ring gleamed softly in the artificial light.

She greeted him with a raised wineglass in her left hand, her mouth in the slight upturning that was her real smile, her eyes- both her natural one and the implant- sparkling with excitement.

“ Nanaki,” she said, tones rolling over the words, “ A toast. I am _delighted_ to bring you the finest present you could receive.”

“ I must admit, I can't imagine what it is,” Nanaki said. “ You've certainly built it up; I do hope I'm not disappointed.”

She chuckled softly, putting down her drink. “ Oh, you know I never break out the dramatics without cause. Come, I'll explain along the way.”

She went to the tightly-sealed door that sat at the back of the small living room, a thing like the bulkheads of a ship, complete with a wheel to turn to open them. Lucrecia's small, thin form turned the tightened, heavy wheel one-handed, without apparent effort, as she spoke.

“ I should start by saying I hid this from you to avoid giving you false hope. I did not want you to believe that I would soon find something if nothing came up; and nothing _did_ come up, for long decades. But... Nanaki...”

She finished the last turn and pushed the big door open.

“ I have been hunting for another natural-born Red Lion for over twenty-five years now.”

“ I... but I'm the last...” he said, as revelation hit him like a freight train. She wouldn't be telling him this now if she hadn't-

“ No, you're not,” Lucrecia said softly, and gestured for him to go in. The real labs were back here, a long hallway connecting to multiple rooms containing her various experiments, each sealed just like the hallway's entrance had been. Go in he did, his feet were moving before he knew it, in something like a panic he stared at all the doors.

“ Where-”

“ Room D,” Lucrecia called from behind him, voice bubbling with amusement. “ Go ahead, it's unlocked. I'll catch up.”

He raced, raced down that long hall, having to skid and catch himself as he shot past the room- D, D, right here, his guts trembled with... with all kinds of things. The big, heavy sealed door, he reared up and grabbed it tight with both paws, grunting and straining as he bent strength that could bring down a grown bull to turn that wheel. Slowly, it creaked, so _slow-_

The door opened, and he almost flung himself inside, stopping as his eyes took in the sight before him.

She was asleep, and trapped in a transparent cage of bulletproof glass. She was brighter colored than he was, almost a tan yellow, which they'd seen in a few of the vatborn. They'd thought it was a result of some flaw in the process, but apparently it was natural... it was natural, that was something they knew now, that they didn't before.

What else would they know? She looked a little older than him. What more did she know? What parts of their culture could they reclaim, she could tell them more names, she could... there was so _much_ , wrapped up in this.

He sat down with a plop where he was. He couldn't even begin to parse it right now, and didn't bother trying. He just... absorbed it.

He was _not_ the last natural-born. His people would not be limited to whatever Nanaki had remembered of their culture from his mother's words before her grief overwhelmed her, supplemented with archaeology. They had another source, now.

“ Do you like it?”

Lucrecia, behind him, smiling that smug smile.

“ I don't have words, Lucrecia,” he said. “ Except... thank you.”

“ You're welcome,” she said, clearly enjoying herself, before slipping into a more business-like tone. “ Of course, it's not all good news. I'm afraid she's a Planet worshipper. Launched into a lot of Alliance rhetoric about us during her attack.”

“ How did you find her?” he breathed out, still too surprised for much coherent thought, just... _looking_ at her.

“ Pure hard work,” she said. “ No trick, no... _lucky_ break, nothing but a willingness to put in the hours. For years we sifted through rumor after rumor, checking up on all of them; finally, we hit paydirt a year ago. She'd been helping a group of Costa del Sol refugees- turns out there's a large camp of them north of New Wutai, living in caves along the coast. It's the real reason we went on “vacation.”

“ All this, for me?” Nanaki said. “ I'm touched, Lucrecia.”

“ I'd be angry if you weren't,” she said with a smile. “ Of course, as always happens when one is trying to do anything, events conspired against us. My husband had to return in the wake of the Reactor bombing, and right after he left, we found she was in the area. I wasn't going to waste the opportunity, so me and the troops I brought went out to capture her.”

She sighed. “ I ordered the entire camp taken hostage to lure her out, and thankfully, it worked. She attacked, trying to save them- and she is _deadly._ Tore through most of the guards I brought. I found myself wishing my husband hadn't had to come home, or that he'd left some Turks with us... or even Scarlet or our little ninja. _Some_ assistance!”

She chuckled. Nanaki, brain slowly reactivating, snorted.

“ As if _you_ couldn't have handled her,” he said.

“ Oh, I could, but then I'd have had to kill all the Shinra guards, which meant I'd have to haul her back myself,” she said. “ As things stood, she backed down when I ordered them to shoot a hostage for every second she didn't surrender. We only had to kill four of them to get her to submit. She stood before us, a sniper got her with some tranqs, and here we are.”

“ What's her name?” he asked.

“ According to one of the refugees she'd talked to, Deneh.”

“ Deneh,” he whispered, like a promise.

“ I'm sure we can bring her around,” Lucrecia said. “ It may take some time- but it's not like we don't have plenty of _that_. Between hostage syndrome and loneliness, it shouldn't be too hard to convert her to our way of thinking... and there's always the asphodels, if nothing else works.”

“ I'd rather not use those,” Nanaki admitted. “ Afraid of losing what she's got in that mind of hers...”

“ I figured as much,” Lucrecia said. “ We'll put using the flowers as a last resort... which reminds me, I need to go prepare some more genetic material for them. I received a letter from Nibelheim; the Descendants were making noises about needing more of _both_ kinds. I'll start with the C strain... and I'll leave you with her for now. Feel free to stay as long as you want- but do tell me if she wakes up!”

“ Of course,” he said, staring at Deneh, as Lucrecia stepped out of the room.

( And next door, into a room labeled C, where a corpse, missing an eye, floated in mako, alongside vats containing fetal semi-clones, each labeled _Cetra._ )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So fun notes time:
> 
> The big one is how proud I am of Wedge's whole thing. Wedge, like Biggs, is named for a Star Wars character. Wexley is the maiden name of the Star Wars character's wife; I chose it because of the alliteration.
> 
> As for Syal, that is all based on some stuff from cut content and from Dirge of Cerebus. See, in dummied content from the Honeybee Inn, you could see someone who mentions their elder brother, and that person is named Kwedge.
> 
> In Dirge of Cerebus- in chapter 8, specifically, thank you FF Wiki for helping me find it- a WRO girl mentions she had a brother who joined AVALANCHE and died when the Plate fell. This could be either Biggs or Wedge, but I was like...
> 
> COMBINE...
> 
> So that WRO representative is now Wedge's sister, assigned male at birth. Syal was chosen for the character's name because that's Wedge's daughter's name in Star Wars Legends, Kwedge being her deadname.
> 
> Secondly, I want everyone to know that I listened to System Shock's soundtrack, particularly the Research level, and Skullgirls' Lab 8 theme, Paved with Good Intentions, while writing Lucrecia's section. Keep that in mind; I liked writing her with her best friend, before we... well. You'll see.


	19. The Lioness and Androcles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turks and Tifa and Trash, here we go!

**Chapter 18**

**The Lioness and Androcles**

The woman Turk was a slender, attractive sort with reddish-brown hair and a big red headband, alongside a belt from which various bombs dangled. The guy wasn't bad looking either, if a bit rougher than Tifa liked her men; he had a mature sort of look to him, strong chin and carefully maintained beard, alongside a red headband like his partner, overtop a fair, muscled body, and a long holster for his oddly-shaped gun- it was a bit too heavy on the end, flared out too much, almost like an old blunderbuss in miniature.

Both Midgardians were outfitted in the classic Turk outfit, the slick black business suit and tie that had been the hallmark of the Turks since before SOLDIER existed. Not a real business suit, of course; between the trauma plates seamlessly woven into the lining and the flexible fabric it had been made of, it was  _ much  _ more combat-worthy than it appeared, more mobile and more defensive, too. Even the tie, which would normally just be a noose to grab for an opponent, was designed to come off if tugged on hard enough... and wasn't that perfect for the Turks? Even their damn clothes were a lie.

...Holy shit, Tifa  _ hated  _ Turks. The only ones she'd ever liked were Vincent and Nanaki.

“ But I'm being rude!” the woman announced cheerfully. Her face was smug and smiling, the cat that has the canary in its grasp; Tifa felt the ferocious urge to punch her, and she gripped that anger as a way to keep her mind off her queasy stomach.

“ Yes, you are,” the flower boy beside Tifa responded. “ I'm afraid I don't know your name, ma'am- nor yours, sir.”

“ Ma'am? Sir? Why, aren't you just the most  _ formal  _ cutie!” the Turk replied with that shit-eating grin.

_ I know violence comes too easy to me these days,  _ Tifa thought,  _ but just this once, I think I'm fully justified. If I was whole, I'd have punted her out the door already. _

“ I kinda like that,” the female Turk said. “ Shame about our orders, or I'd show you a  _ wonderful  _ time.”

She winked at Sephiroth.

“ But to answer your question,” her partner said, “ I'm Vicks, and she is Blast.”

“ Yep!” she said. “ We're business partners, and today,  _ you  _ are our business, good-looking.”

“ What...  _ business _ ?” Sephiroth asked, eyes narrowing.

“ What my partner means,” said the man going by Vicks, voice dry as desert sand and about as rough, “ is that we have been requested to bring you in. While we would prefer to take you in alive and unharmed, we have been authorized to use any means necessary. Please submit to our custody, and no harm will be done to you.”

( A lie, given Vincent had been clear about the  _ alive and unharmed  _ part, but the Turks well knew that targets who thought their lives were on the line submitted faster.)

“ I- for what reason are the Turks after me?” Sephiroth asked, drawing up to his full height and putting both hands on his scythe, a threat as obvious as a rattlesnake's noisy tail. “ I will not go without some knowledge as to  _ why _ .”

“ He won't go at all,” Tifa growled at them. She shrugged the backpack holding her armor on more tightly; if a fight came, she didn't want it shuffling around, throwing off her balance.

“ Don't know who you are, don't care,” Blast said- before doing a double-take. “ What the- hey, we've got a SOLDIER here!”

“ Do we?” Vicks said, looking himself. “ Hmm... you're right. Where did you come from?”

“ You know, we tried for SOLDIER!” Blast said cheerfully. “ Turns out the mako treatments would have melted both of us into goop, but we did well enough on our physicals that they recruited us to the Turks instead. Kinda like this job better. Anyway, SOLDIER girl, who are you, and why are you trying to get killed opposing us?”

“ I'm the woman who's going to kick your teeth in,” Tifa growled... and hoped they didn't see right through her. If she could bluff, they'd run. “ Go home, little wetwork scumbags. You failed to get into SOLDIER, I didn't. I'll break you in half.”

“ Maybe,” Blast said. “ But, well... now that I'm looking... you don't look so good. Though I'd swear I've seen you before- but you weren't quite so pale, and you didn't waver on your legs so badly. You're having trouble even standing, aren't you? This fellow, he's pretty famous as a healer in these parts, I bet you're here for healing- you can't stop us.”

... _Fuck._

“ So, anyway,” Blast said, dismissing Tifa and turning to Sephiroth, “ that ferocious lioness by your side's really a sick kitty cat, so I hope you weren't counting on her to save you. Come on, me and Vicks ain't so bad. I might even give you a kiss if you come along quiet and nice. Tell you what, we'll even let you heal this sick-ass SOLDIER first, how about that? I mean, we _could_ just kill you both and haul your body back, but why do that? I'd hate to kill someone so handsome. And it'd feel rude to shoot a SOLDIER when they're feeling down.”

Tifa turned to Sephiroth. “ These are Turks. Black ops wetwork scumbags. If they want you, it's nothing good.”

Even when she'd been Shinra's, she'd never been entirely comfortable with SOLDIER's dark mirror... and now, now she wondered what they'd done she had no knowledge of, given how ugly some of the stuff she _had_ figured out was.

“ I do not need anyone to defend me,” Sephiroth said tersely. “ And I am well aware of what evils the Turks perpetuate, Ms. Lockhart. I implore you to make your way to the back room behind us; I shall handle these two.”

He pointed briefly with his right before putting it back to his scythe, and Tifa followed his finger to a door behind the pulpit on the right side, before she turned back to the Turks.

“ Ooh, handsome _and_ heroic! Trying to save the lady... yeah, that's the good stuff,” Blast said with a sigh. “ Man, I wish Vincent had let me screw you.”

Vicks put a hand to his forehead.

“ _Blast_.”

“ Sorry!” she said perkily to her partner as she pulled two grenades off her belt and started juggling them. Classic distraction tactics; Tifa ignored the show, tried to keep her eyes on Blast and Vicks both, but her own illness made it a losing proposition, she kept getting distracted by the flashing of the round homemade grenades. “ Anyway, you  _sure_ you don't want to be all sweet and come along quiet? I'm afraid we  _have_ to take you in, but we don't have to be mean about it.”

“ Absolutely not,” Sephiroth scoffed. “ Now leave, or I will be forced to fight you.”

“ I can fight,” Tifa growled, and tried to psych herself up to move. She wasn't doing great, but surely she could help this man who had saved her...

“ We'll see!” Blast responded cheerfully, and in a single smooth motion caught her juggled grenades by their pins, using their momentum to unpin and toss them in a lazy underhand right at their feet, one for each of them.

Time slowed down as adrenaline was pumped into Tifa's abused body, her veins aching so much they protested the intrusion, it felt like battery acid being squirted into her flesh to feel that surge of strength. Past the burning sensation in her limbs, though, was her knowledge that she  _ had  _ to move. What did this flower boy know of fighting? Sure, he had his scythe... but Tifa had met a lot of scythe wielders. Most weren't much more than edgy Plate kids, who thought they looked cool. She'd heard they could be good weapons, but she'd never met a good fighter who used one. He probably only had a scythe because he was an actual honest-to-Gaia  _ farmer.  _ Probably hadn't fought anything but monsters before.

...No, she'd have to do the heavy lifting. Guy had saved her life, least she could do was keep fucking  _ Turks  _ from catching him. 

_ I've fought hurt before,  _ she told herself, and steeled her spine- and  _ moved _ .

A protesting scream from her bones echoed in her mind as she lashed out with a kick, nailing the grenade in front of her and sending it directly into Blast's nose. The Turk's head was flung back as Tifa threw herself into a stumbling pounce, a clumsy leap that nonetheless put her right before her healer, and she kicked again, sending the other grenade into Vicks' groin.

“ Ahh!” Blast yelped in surprise. Vicks, meanwhile, grunted in annoyance as the grenade hit his protective codpiece with a clang and did him no real harm.

( The man wasn't stupid; men had a giant off-switch between their legs, it just made sense to keep armor on it.)

The grenades went off almost immediately, having been apparently on a short fuse; light purple gas began spraying violently from their tops, the grenades spinning from the force of ejection. Their spins spread it everywhere; the Turks retreated, Blast rubbing her nose, Vicks taking something from a pocket.

“ Blast,” he said, tossing her a pill as he aimed his gun at Tifa.

“ Shit, I got it, Vicks,” she said, dry-swallowing it.

A strong hand dragged Tifa to the side as Vicks' gun popped off, the shot missing her; she followed it unconsciously, not really meaning to, and saw the impact on the wall behind her, a little puff of that same purple gas. A memory was jogged by the sight; light purple gas...

She took a breath as Sephiroth pulled her again, Vicks still shooting as he walked backwards away from the gas, popping a pill into his own mouth as he went. Under the scent of the flowers and old wood, there was... that dry earth smell, like dry basements, just a little touch of almost sickly-sweet on top. They'd used that same gas, her and Aeris, chasing the live specimens Lucrecia wanted, used grenades a lot like these, alongside a modified flamethrower Aeris had always cajoled Tifa into carrying for her. Lucrecia made it out of bugs near Mideel...

(  _ You're the strong one!  _ Aeris had said cheerfully the first time, grinning as Tifa put on the modified flamethrower tank and nozzle.  _ I'm too delicate! And it doesn't match my dress at all. _ Zack had thought it was hilarious.)

“ Sleeper gas,” she said to Sephiroth in the present, as the gas spewing from the grenades grew so thick she could not see the Turks, Vicks still shooting but his aim thrown off by the fact that he couldn't see his targets. “ Sleeper- knocks you out- trying to take you alive.”

Talk and movement was too much; her stomach rebelled. It jerked hard, trying to send her to the floor...

_ Wait, that's a good idea _ , she thought. She grabbed Sephiroth as she went down into dry heaves, and Vicks' next few shots went over their heads.

“ Duck,” she croaked out, before her pulsing stomach shut her up again. Oh,  _ fuck _ , her insides lurched, there was nothing in there to get out- she hadn't eaten in three days- her guts clenched hard on themselves, this was worse than if she actually  _ was  _ puking. Her throat clicked dry like a gun running empty.

“ You shouldn't be moving like that,” Sephiroth said, strong face beset with worry. “ You'll hurt yourself...”

“ No choice,” she said, and tried to tug him towards the door he'd pointed out for her earlier, some hope of escape in her mind. Those pills, they'd used the pills too, protected from the gas, they had a few minutes before they kicked in but then they'd charge in... more gunfire, but still above their heads. Vicks couldn't see them, not with the gas cloud in the doorway. Probably taking cover at the door, if he was smart.

Sephiroth apparently figured out what she was trying to do, and he ended up half-pushing her as they moved in a kind of crouch, him supporting her, heading to the door. More gunfire, but if they could just make the door they'd have a chance to maybe ambush them, turn it around...

There was a distinct sound above the bullets- the high, clear ringing of pins being pulled, the musical triangle sound half a decade of bitter world war had ingrained into Tifa's ears.

Two more grenades, one thrown long, one short- trying to cover the entire church, Blast didn't need to _see_ them to gas them both. The short one was barely in front of the door, where they'd been standing, but the long one sailed over their heads and landed right in front of the very door they were trying to reach.

_Fuck- no!_ Tifa thought, and with a horrible effort that probably tore something in her intestines, hurled herself out of her crouch straight at it. Right as it started spewing sleep and loss, she grabbed it, and with a wild surge of panic-fueled strength, she hurled it back towards the door she could not see, the little canister propelled like a rocket by both her toss and the purple spray shooting out of its back. It sailed into the smoggy cloud of knockout gas, trailing purple in a pretty arc.

A loud cry came a moment later.

“ What the hell do you have against my nose?!?” Blast yelled at her from behind the smokescreen.

_Can't believe I got her again,_ Tifa had time to think, as her body tried to assassinate her for her last stunt. Sephiroth grabbed her in one strong left arm as he tapped the door open with his scythe's top, hauling her bodily through the door as she jerked and heaved.

“ Ms. Lockhart,” he said, as he got them inside and shut the door, putting her down on the floor where she curled up in cramps worse than any period she'd ever had, “ I... I fear overusing magic to heal you, it can cause so many problems... but in this situation... I am so sorry for what I am about to do, but I cannot defeat them and defend you at the same time.”

Overhealing her?... somehow, she found it in her to laugh. It was funny as hell. Of course. He was a doctor, but he wasn't _military,_ how SOLDIERs really worked wasn't common knowledge, he didn't _know..._

He gave her an odd look as she hacked out a wheezing laugh, before she answered him.

“ I'm SOLDIER,” Tifa whispered to him. “ You can't overheal a SOLDIER... immune...”

“ I... truly?” he said, as realization spread through him. More pins, more gunfire, muffled by the door. Irrationally, the thought occurred to the still-laughing Tifa that his flower garden was probably fucked. “ I wasn't aware that a SOLDIER did not suffer healing exhaustion...”

She took in the new room around her as she rolled on the ground hurting, as he stood up and put a hand to the materia in his scythe. This place was dilapidated as hell, mostly trashed, but it had been grand once; two great staircases, winding circularly up, opposed, both broken, the left more so. Holes in the roof, and a ladder atop the second floor landing where the staircases ended, leading to the biggest hole in the roof, and some material for repairing them. Someone was trying to fix this place up, a task that would have taken an army of carpenters a campaign season to complete.

“ I could have had you on your feet days ago if I'd known,” Sephiroth said wryly. “ I was being so careful, fearing I'd over-extend your limitations... but if you can handle it...”

“ I can,” she said, taking in a deep, shuddery breath.

Right before he closed his eyes, Tifa would swear, despite her blurring vision from tears of pain, that red was pouring into the blue of his eyes, turning them purple, like a spray of foreign blood injected from the sides of his pupils.

He prayed, the way some mages did, to focus themselves, as they drew deep on the materia, calling to the crystallized power within.

“ Planet, Creator, holy Curaga, through me, heal your wounded creation, give gift of sterngth, blessings of life...”

He tapped the floor as his short prayer finished, and something hot and heavy and wet and _alive_ coated her, like the world's most pleasant slime. The spell was so strong it surrounded her utterly; not just sight or smell or sound or taste or touch, but all five, his magic lit up along all of her senses at once. All around her prone form danced images of his flowers spinning in the air, purple black blooms; the smell of chocolate was so strong in her nose it was like laying in the flowers again. To this was added the sensation of silk-soft petals touching her fingertips, and the taste of homemade vegetable soup, the sudden knowledge that this was the soup his mother made for him as a child, the food he turned to for comfort in times of trouble. In her ears was a chorus, singing in a language she did not know- maybe the kind of songs that had echoed in this church, once, long ago.

As her vision cleared, as her insides aligned themselves correctly, as all her suffering ended, she saw that the power washed over her and splashed onto the world around her; the old wood she lay on was rejuvenated, little springs and blossoms suddenly growing out of the dead wood, new growth where there had only been old death.

_He's_ _ strong _ _ ,  _ she thought, simply basking for a moment in that sensation, in this warm ooze of life, laying on her like a mantle.

Her inner ear finally found its feet as the spell ended, and the dizziness passed. Her stomach stopped trying to immigrate out of her body, her muscles relaxed, were sore no longer. Her throat unclenched, her heart eased.

She breathed deep, and opened her eyes, finally feeling like herself again as she rose up from her position, standing without pain or dizziness or wavering.

“ Wow,” she said. “ I... thank you.”

“ You're... welcome,” he said, opening his perfectly blue eyes before letting out a long sighing breath- that had clearly drained him a bit, he was leaning on his scythe hard. Tifa's mind, now able to think of something other than _please don't puke_ and _save this man_ , considered this stranger, who had saved her life... and probably saved it again, right now, because she doubted the Turks would leave her alive if they won today.

_He_ _ is _ _ a powerful healer,  _ New Tifa said, pondering.  _ What's he doing down here? These are the slums, but someone who can heal like that... lot of folk up top who'd pay well for that kind of power. _

_ He saved us, don't you go distrusting him _ , Old Tifa replied in her head.

_ We don't know him! _

The argument in her skull was interrupted as she heard voices from behind the door they'd entered. 

“ You see them?” Blast's peppy tone. Great, the pills must have kicked in.

“ No, Blast, the smoke is still too thick,” Vicks replied.

“ Shit, keep looking. Bet they went to that door he pointed out.”

“  How can they be in my church with the gas everywhere? Shouldn't they be knocked out? ” Sephiroth asked Tifa quietly, so as not to be heard, as Vicks replied in the affirmative to Blast.

“  Remedies, ” Tifa whispered back. “  Pills you can take, keeps the gas from working. They came prepared... ”

She clenched her right hand into a fist, and it felt good, she felt  _ whole _ . She adjusted her backpack to a more comfortable position, and punched her left palm with her good strong right, feeling glee in the sense of doing it with no backlash, no dizziness, no queasiness, just her usual solid self.

“ But I'm prepared now, too. ”

_ We owe him, _ she told New Tifa in her head.  _ We owe him at least enough to stop the damn Turks. After that... we'll leave. Get back to Cloud and Sector 7 and AVALANCHE. _

_ Well... yeah, okay, I can go along with any plan labeled “fuck Turks”,  _ New Tifa acquiesced.

“ Found the door!” came a voice from very close by.

Sephiroth opened his mouth to speak, but Tifa held up a finger, and motioned for him to back away from the door, which he did gratefully, hobbling a bit on his scythe. That big of a spell had really wiped him out.

“  At least it's not near my flower garden, ” she heard him mumble softly as he stepped back, before he spoke up a little louder. “  Don't hurt yourself, Tifa. ”

“  Won't be me hurting, ” she boasted.

The door slammed open, kicked in, and two grenades with the pins popped off went sailing inside. Tifa, now moving at her full speed, rolled over to both, grabbing them and chucking them out the door.

“ Ha!” Blast yelled at her from her position next to the door, popping the pin off another grenade as she spoke. “ Missed me that time!”

Vicks took aim even as his partner spoke, blasting away at Tifa; but she was sick no more. She ducked and rolled past the door, past the two surprised Turks, holding her breath as she plunged into the purple cloud. It was a breathed-in kind of toxin, not a contact poison; so long as she took no lungfuls, she'd be fine.

( It wouldn't take long to effect her if she _did_ breathe it in, though; Lucrecia had mentioned she'd specifically designed it to counteract the SOLDIER enhancements. _Just in case a SOLDIER turns rogue,_ she'd said, and that had been three years before Zack had left, so Tifa had laughed at the idea...)

Blast was still holding onto her grenade, having been surprised out of throwing it; Tifa, rising out of her roll, slapped it up into her face. It conked her nose, and then went off, the spray of purple going straight into her eyes; remedy in her system or not, that would still hurt like a bastard. Blast howled in indignity and pain both as her grenade fell to her feet, still spitting sleeper clouds.

Vicks tried to draw a bead on Tifa... but at this range, he hadn't the time. With one strong hand, Tifa grabbed Vicks; with the other, she grabbed his gun. In the next moment, she hurled Vicks bodily into the back room of the church, where he rolled to a stop beside the left staircase, dazed but still conscious.

As she walked back into the room and out of the smoke, she pulled the magazine out of his gun and chucked it away. She walked up to him and, as he tried to rise, shot him in the balls with the last bullet in his own gun.

He _whuffed_ and went down. Even with a codpiece on, at point-blank range, the impact force still hurt. She grabbed his gun in both hands and bent the barrel into a U shape, then chucked his gun at his feet as he lay there, dazed.

“ I think that takes care of it,” she said to Sephiroth. She'd break this one's neck, then take a deep breath and plunge into the gas to kill his partner. “ Give me a minute, I'll take care of both of them, then we can leave.”

“ Take... care?” Sephiroth said, before shaking his head as he understood her. “ They're beat. You can't...”

“ They're _Turks_ ,” Tifa said. “ They'll keep coming after you-”

“ No,” he said firmly. “ Leave them be. If it comes to it, if we _must,_ then they will die... but I will not kill if I do not have a reason. They are beat. We can leave. There is no need for more death.”

...These Turks were after _him_ , so she guessed it was his prerogative... but she'd be doing her rescuer a disservice not to voice her disapproval.

“ Okay, but this is absolutely the wrong decision,” she said. “ Turks complete the mission. Always. No hesitation... and no limits. Still... you're the client.”

She hadn't meant to say that last part... _guess mercenary talk is just part of me now._

“ I... think so,” he said, impressed. “ Let's head to the roof- it's hard to track over rooftops.”

“ Alright,” Tifa said. “ Good plan.”

Sephiroth nodded, and they were halfway up when they were interrupted.

“ Like hell you're leaving!” came a roar from the door. Tifa turned to see Blast, angrily snarling at them, eyes bright red and weeping from irritation. She held another grenade in her hands, one that looked different from the gas grenades, smaller and smoother. She wound up like a Wutai baseball pitcher and then hurled it at them in a beautiful throw, aimed dead-on for Tifa's own nose.

But people had spent five years throwing grenades, knives, swords, and at one point an old radio at Tifa. Her mutant reflexes led her to catch the fastball, and she hurled it back at the Turk in the same moment. It cracked hard on the Turk's nose before bouncing off to land a few feet from her, and Blast howled as her nose finally broke, splattering across her face in a spray of red blood.

_I wasn't aiming for her nose that time, either,_ Tifa had time to think, before her next thought was _that grenade's still live._

Tifa turned to Sephiroth and spun him around, putting hands over his ears as she dove on top of the farmer; she'd bet ten gil Blast had gotten tired of trying to take them alive, and the grenade she'd thrown was a fatal one. The blast about to ensue was going to be messy, and this poor, innocent flower boy, who wanted to spare his enemies, probably didn't need to see the Turk get torn apart by her own grenade, or to hear the sound of her impending messy death... and he also didn't need to get hit by shrapnel, which was why Tifa had leapt atop him. She healed, he wouldn't.

He was _really_ muscular, she noted as she lay on top of him in the second before the explosion; it was like leaning on a solid brick wall. Damn. Farming was good for a body, apparently.

The grenade did go off, but to Tifa's surprise, it wasn't flame and shrapnel that came out. Light and sound instead, a thunderous strike; a flashbang. It temporarily deafened Tifa, and as she turned to see what was going on, she saw that Blast had slumped against the wall, completely dazed from being so near it when it went off. She'd probably live... shame.

Still... more nonlethal? From a Turk, and an _angry_ one at that...

_They want him_ _ alive _ _. Who is this guy? Why are the Turks so invested in taking him in while he's still breathing? Obviously an AVALANCHE supporter, but... something feels off about this._

Tifa's ears protested, and she'd be deaf for a bit, but that... hadn't actually been as bad as flashbangs usually were. She should know, the Ravens had been fond of them to the point of near-absurdity; they'd made up for their relative weakness compared to a proper SOLDIER by opening every fight with trickery and then mobbing them like a pack of superhuman dogs.

( Once, a particularly inventive Raven had hurled an old stereo at her from his hiding place that was playing a Wutai roller song full blast. She'd caught it on reflex, and he'd jumped out and sucker-punched her while she was still trying to figure out what the hell was going on. She never _did_ catch that guy.)

So... nonlethal, even when mad as hell, and a _low-power_ variant of nonlethal, like they were afraid to hurt him. They hadn't come loaded for bear; they'd had kid gloves on.

_Who are you?_ She thought, as she rose up off Sephiroth. _Why do they want you_ _alive_ _so badly?_

As Sephiroth arose, she saw his mouth move. Heh. Thankfully, the Ravens' fondness for the disorienting grenades meant Tifa had a lot of experience talking while deaf.

“ Flashbang,” she said, levelly and in a normal tone. “ I'm deaf, but let's get to the roof, my hearing'll come back.”

Sephiroth made an “oh” movement with his lips, then went up the ladder one-handed, still holding onto his scythe. Tifa went up after him, emerging onto the church's roof into the high noon. She stood up on the shingles, and got her first good look around herself, to see where she'd landed after _falling off the Plate_ , a fact she still couldn't really wrap her head around.

She'd not known anything of where she fell, to be honest. She'd fallen in the darkness last night, so she hadn't seen anything clear save... well, save _ground_ , too distracted with her own impending death to care about the particulars of where her corpse would splat.

Now, in the bright light of day- or the bright light of the sun lamps, she supposed- it was clear that she'd landed in a dump.

...Of _course_ she had. She sniggered. She had _literally_ been thrown out like trash, and into a Shinra dumping ground, like all the old things Shinra didn't want anymore.

_Heidegger, you bastard_ , she thought, starting to laugh. _You threw me into a trash can!_

Still laughing, she surveyed her fellow refuse. Clearly there'd been something here beforehand, one of the eight villages that had been eaten for fuel during the birth of Midgar by the fetal supercity; this church she stood on was proof of that. There were remnants of other buildings scattered around, too; a grain silo, what might have been a barn, something that looked like an apartment complex... people had _lived_ here, once.

Now, though, there was just junk here, literal mountains of it. It had a definite theme of construction throughout it; whereas Sector 7's great dumping ground was so random and varied that there was no rhyme or reason to what was present, this junkyard appeared to be specifically for old construction equipment, like an elephant's graveyard for abandoned vehicles.

Ancient stuff, too, most of it looked like the very machines Ruvie Tueste had once used to make the Plate rise high in the sky. Dozens of dozers lay slumped against each other in the friendly manner of old drunkards, while cranes nearby raised their long metal necks in the sky like estranged giraffes, surveying the great field of scrap. Trucks of every size and manner lay everywhere in every which way, rightside and leftside and even upside down, crippled as turtles tossed on shellback.

An entire field of things Shinra had once used to build its glory, now tossed aside to die.

_Like me,_ Tifa thought, and her grin faded. _I helped build them, and they threw me away here, too._

With that thought chilling any remaining amusement, she turned to the doctor.

“ Can you hear me?” the flower boy asked, sounding like he had fallen into a well... a mile away... in a cave with bad acoustics.

He was probably shouting, but her ears hadn't recovered _that_ much in the last five seconds.

“ Sort of,” Tifa said. “ Lead and I'll follow; you know the area better than I do.”

He nodded, tapping his scythe on the ground- the edge retracted like a sideways switchblade knife, sinking back down into the staff. Now _that_ was interesting; she'd never seen a device like that. Sephiroth left, and Tifa, backpack on, followed, jogging over the rooftops of this village-that-was, which had no name now, leaving the church and the Turks behind... and while she expected them to catch up and attack, no such assault came.

( In the church, after the duo recovered, they wondered who the _hell_ that SOLDIER had been... and why she looked so damn familiar.)

-

They were halfway back when Tifa's hearing finally returned. They were near the grain silo she'd seen, an old, rusted ladder leading up to its top; at that top, some enterprising soul had built a sort of bridge to a crane's cabin, and from there, she could see that it was a short trip down a ladder and an old truck bed to the actual ground.

“ So we have to go up... to go down,” Tifa said. “ Whoever is building these junkyard pathways did a shit job.”

“ We're slumdwellers, Ms. Lockhart, not road architects,” he said with wry amusement. “ I'm not sure who put this into place... it's been here a long time.”

She quirked an eyebrow at him. “ I meant to ask... why are you calling me Ms. Lockhart?”

He gave her a tiny half-grin, just an uplifting of one corner of his mouth. It looked good on him.

( Damn near everything did. No wonder that Turk had been all over him, this guy was damn handsome.)

“ My mother and father taught me good manners,” he said. “ I didn't want to sound overly familiar.”

She grinned back, to show she wasn't offended.

“ You saved my life, I think you've earned the right to call me by my first name.”

“ As you wish,” he said, turning a bit shyly away. “ Be warned, this ladder's pretty rusty; we should go up it one at a time. I've been meaning to replace it, but, well... I've been meaning to do a lot of things.”

“ You use this route often?” Tifa asked him. He shook his head.

“ No, but I've always valued it as an alternate route; the junkyard shifts sometimes, and if the main road ever gets cut off, this is one of the more accessible alternatives. Once a crane fell into the road and me and Kyrie spent... I think two months just clearing it, the hedgehog pies attacking us the whole time.”

“ The... the what?” the martial artist asked him. “ I'm sorry, I must still be having hearing problems. Did you say-”

“ Yes,” he said with a sigh. “ Hedgehog pies. I don't know who named them. They're little primate monsters in the area- fat-bellied little red goblin things with spikes on their back, which is presumably where the hedgehog comes from... but why they're called hedgehog _pies,_ I have no idea.”

“ Hedgehog pies,” Tifa said. “ The local monsters are called... hedgehog pies.”

“ We're not proud of it,” he responded. A giggle popped out of Tifa's mouth before she could stop it.

“ Huh,” she said. “ Well.”

He nodded grimly. “ I am as disappointed in us as you are.”

“ We don't have anything that badly named in Sec... my home,” she answered, barely dodging at the last second.

_Dumbass!_ New Tifa yelled at her. _Why don't we just go “hey, I live in Sector 7, AVALANCHE is located under the Buster Pub Cloud runs, make sure to tell your local Shinra recruiter!_

_You're the dumbass, he's not going to betray us after all he's done to keep us alive,_ Old Tifa responded.

_He's got Turks after him, once they pull off a few fingers, he'll tell them anything they want to know- and he let them live. He's a_ _ dead _ _man. They're gonna really be after us after the battle last night- well, three days ago. Weird to think about that, it was yesterday for me, but it's been half a week..._

“ You are lucky, then... wherever you hail from,” he said, and his tone indicated he'd caught her last-minute evasion. Still, he didn't seem offended by it, hard as it was to tell with someone so straight-faced. “ I assume you have less ridiculously named monsters.”

“ Yes,” she said, good mood returning as she considered the possibility of fighting a _hedgehog pie_. “ I... I'm sorry, I'm still stuck on that name. If we fight them, I might die from sheer laughter.”

“ They're not that dangerous,” the farmer admitted with amusement in his voice, if not his face. “ Honestly they're mostly just annoying, unless they attack in packs or are led by a male. The real troubles are the Shinra robots and discarded technosoldiers- they are what make this area so dangerous.”

“ Because it's a dumping ground, so sometimes they toss in something that isn't actually dead or decommissioned,” Tifa said.

He nodded. “ Though sometimes, you see things come to life that nobody actually built... Shinra technology is cursed, wrong. Sometimes it makes monsters, and sometimes monsters are made of it.”

He shook his head, then gave her another small smile.

“ Though I suppose a member of AVALANCHE doesn't need _me_ to tell them that.”

“ No,” Tifa said. _Still not a great idea to tell him I'm just a hired gun- I'm not part of AVALANCHE, just a merc,_ she thought to herself.

Though Shinra would probably not pay much attention to the difference either, after the battle yesterday.

_Three days before,_ Tifa reminded herself again. Man, losing time was terrible, she was glad she'd only lost three days. It'd be incredibly confusing to lose more time than that, if losing half a week was playing such havoc with her.

( _you lost half a decade after Nibelheim, five years, where were you_ \- but then that thought is gone, roots writhing inside her- roots, vines, she remembers a field of white flowers with pink centers- what?- all gone, but not cleanly, a sense of unease remaining)

Shaking it off, Tifa decided to move ahead, away from this conversation, from... whatever was going on inside her.

“ Well, time's a'wasting; no need to stand out here like sitting ducks, waiting for those Turks to shoot us,” she said, and headed for the ladder. “ You really should have let me kill them.”

“ I... I am not like that,” he offered, and Tifa shrugged. “ I'll follow after you- we should go one at a time. Ladder's not the steadiest.”

She nodded and headed up, feeling the ladder wanting to give with each step. If it fell... that would hurt, but then again, she'd _fallen off the Plate_ , so she'd probably be fine.

...It was _so_ weird to think she'd survived. Of all the things in her life, all the impossible and bizarre events she'd experienced, that one took the cake. She'd _fallen off the Plate_ and lived.

_No one is ever going to believe you_ , New Tifa said in her head, and Old Tifa laughed in agreement.

Grinning at that thought, she reached the ladder's top, a steel walkway around the silo's top, and looked back down at Sephiroth.

“ It's good!” she said.

“ A ladder inspector and a SOLDIER,” he commented as he secured his staff to a strap on his back and began to climb up. “ A woman of many talents.”

“ You're apparently a flower boy and a doctor,” Tifa said with a shrug as he clambered up. “ We're versatile people.”

“ Regular virtuosos,” he agreed.  
  


He was almost to the top when the ladder finally broke, detaching from the top.

“ Shit,” he said, quite calmly, as he quickly hopped off the ladder and grabbed the lip of the walkway. The ladder tumbled away below him with a booming clang as Tifa leaned down and grabbed his arms.

“ Come on, foul mouth,” the military woman said as she tugged the civilian man up. “ What happened to all those manners? What would your mother say?”

“ She'd tell me to use stronger language,” he said as she sat him down. “ Cursing is appropriate in many situations, and my mother enjoys a wide variety of them. You can ask her yourself when we get back.”

His mom was alive... _Turks'll use that,_ she thought, and while she hated having that thought, it was the truth.

“ Sephiroth... the Turks... they'll go after your mom,” she said. “ If she's in Sector 5, we need to get there first.”

“ I... had not considered that,” he said.

“ I'll stick with you until we get to her house,” Tifa said. “ I still owe you, after all.”

“ I just wish I knew why they were after me,” Sephiroth said, as they set off at a fast, but not hurried, pace, careful not to fall off the junk piles as they descended to the crane cabin. “ For all my admiration for AVALANCHE and all those who stand against Shinra... I'm not part of any resistance group. I've healed resistance members when I could, such as yourself, and provided aid, even... thought about joining... but I never have. Too much to do in Sector 5.”

“ Well, they're after me, specifically,” Tifa said. “ But... they didn't seem to care much about me.”

“ No, they were focused on me; I don't think they looked at you twice. At least, not until you began to duel Blast's nose to the death.”

“ Would you believe that every hit was an accident?” Tifa said.

“ All three times?” Sephiroth asked as they hopped off the crane cabin.

“ All three,” Tifa said. “ I don't even know _how_ I got her the second time, that was sheer luck.”

Sephiroth chuckled.

“ I believe it. It's too ridiculous to be a lie.”

They were silent for a moment as they finally reached the ground, the gravels crunching under their feet.

“ You were a SOLDIER,” he said. “ A famous one... are you... _really_ Tifa Lockhart?”

“ The one and only,” Tifa said. “ Unless Shinra's been cloning me, but I think Lucrecia pulled the plug on those projects.”

“ There were cloning projects?” the farmer asked.

“ Yes,” she answered. “ Mostly old ones- some guy named Hojo was extremely invested in the idea. Lucrecia called them... ambitiously stupid, I think, were her exact words. She figured it was easier to improve already-existing humans rather than try to build a new one and hope it performed as well as the original.”

“ Well,” Sephiroth said. “ That's... something I shall now have to think about, thank you Tifa. I... I was going to ask other questions... particularly about what the Turks might want with me... but now I'm not sure I want to know.”

“ They might just be trying to recruit you,” Tifa said. “ Sometimes the Turks seek out people for various projects, usually SOLDIER, though I can't imagine why they'd be conscripting people these days; war's over. Also, when they're trying to get people to join, they usually bring gil and paperwork, not sleeper gas and grenades.”

“ I... wanted to be a SOLDIER once,” Sephiroth said wryly as they climbed the trail. Tifa's nose registered the faintest scent of a city, the press of hot steel and humans in a large group and oil; they were close. “ I was a big fan of Aerith Valentine, back in the day... which feels weird to tell you, in all honesty.”

“ Let me guess,” Tifa said. “ Fan infighting.”

“ Somewhat,” he admitted. “ You were by far the more popular SOLDIER down in the slums... you were seen as one of us, just some girl who ended up being a great hero. A normal person, unlike Aerith... which is probably why I was such a fan of hers, to be honest.”

“ So you wanted to join to be like your hero?” Tifa asked. He chuckled.

“ It's odd to think of it, but yes... Aerith was my hero. I was seventeen when the war started, a bit old to be a SOLDIER, but hearing of her exploits... I think I admired her poise the most. She always came off as so refined, despite the violence she was surrounded by. I admired her courage, her fortitude, to do the things she had done and still be... elegant.”

“ I suppose I came off as a brute?” Tifa teased. It was... fun, to talk about this part of her past, so distant now.

“ No, please, do not mistake me,” Sephiroth said, with what for anyone else would have been a rushed tone. “ You were... you always struck me as warm, friendly. The kind of person you could meet on the street. But Aerith had an otherworldliness to her I liked. She was... special.”

“ She was,” Tifa said.

( Aeris had been her friend; Aerith had been her betrayer. She had been both; one did not overwhelm the other. That was the worst part- Tifa loved her still, even as she hated her, she could not choose one and be done with it.)

“ I almost signed up,” Sephiroth said, not noticing the momentary distance in Tifa's mako-green eyes. “ But my mother... well, my father had died fighting for Shinra beforehand, when I was younger- before the War- and she was so scared of me going. She was adamant that I avoid Shinra. Good thing, too, given what I found out about them later...”

He turned a concerned look to her. “ Why are you fighting against them, if I might ask? You were one of theirs, once.”

“ I know,” Tifa said. _As if I don't think about that very fact often enough._ “ They... they betrayed me.”

He nodded, and spoke no more, as they crested a hill and Sector 5 was before them.

At this distance, Sector 5's town was just a wall. Stone, fortified with tightly-packed trash in wire cages before it, to make an assault by monsters as difficult as possible. A few town watch could be see, standing guard on the stone with old guns in hand; one greeted them, a Corelian woman with a big grin and a long rifle.

“ Champion!” she yelled, one hand on her gun, the other giving a lazy wave. “ That the Plate jumper?”

“ Yes, Gwen,” he called back to the woman on the wall.

“ Champion? Plate jumper- oh, she means me,” Tifa said to him. “ Champion is you, I presume?”

“ Please don't call me that,” he asked.

“ Okay,” Tifa said. Champion was a weird thing to call a person, anyway. “ Who's she?”

“ Gwen, head of the town watch,” Sephiroth commented. “ She was with me and Kyrie when we found you, Ms. Lockhart.”

“ So how's the woman who fell from the Plate?” Gwen called to them. “ Because you should be dead, SOLDIER or not!”

“ I know,” Tifa called back to her. “ I don't know how I'm alive, but I'm pretty grateful for it.”

_Stop talking,_ New Tifa growled. _You don't know these people._

_But... if she knows who I am already..._

_Hush!_

“ You should buy lottery tickets!” Gwen commented, which Tifa barely heard, wrestling with herself. “ Put some of that luck to practical use! Or go gambling at Wall Market.”

“ We're heading in, Gwen,” Sephiroth said, sparing Tifa the need to respond. “ We can continue this conversation without shouting for everyone to hear.”

They walked a few more minutes, down one more hill, and up the last, to the town's gate. Gwen was there to greet them, grinning wide.

“ You are the _toughest_ motherfucker I have ever met,” Gwen said to Tifa, and held out a hand. “ Gwen Dollis, at your service.”

Tifa took her hand and shook it, before realizing she _really_ shouldn't be tossing around her name. _Tifa Lockhart_ was, as Sephiroth had just mentioned to her, not an unknown name down here.

“ ...Good to meet you,” she said, her brilliant attempt at subterfuge.

_I need to figure out a code name._

Gwen turned to Sephiroth. “ She remember her name? It's Tifa Lockhart, right? Which is weird because I'm pretty sure Tifa's _dead_. My brother mourned like crazy, he was _convinced_ he would grow up to marry her. I told him she was so far out of his league he couldn't even see it, but he was young and dumb.”

Tifa's mind blanked on how to respond, so she said nothing by default.

“ She remembers,” Sephiroth confirmed to Gwen after an awkward moment, waiting for Tifa to respond. “ Ms. Lockhart has not only recovered her faculties, but defended me- from Shinra Turks. I need to check on my mother, Gwen.”

“ Turks? Shit,” Gwen said, before looking at Tifa. “ And you defended _him?_ How tough are these Turks, if he needed help?”

“ Not- not that bad,” Tifa said, trying to take some control back over bother her surprise and the conversation. _Be cool, be calm, be professional_. “ Not for a SOLDIER.”

“ We need to be going,” Sephiroth said, polite but insistent, and Gwen nodded.

“ Yeah, I wasn't trying to block ya,” she said, before turning to go with him. “ I'll come with you. Your mama's alright. Don't much like Shinra's shit; guys didn't do jack shit in Sector 7, and if they're down here in 5, I can't imagine it's because they discovered a love for us gutter rats.”

They traveled quick, Sephiroth not quite running but eating up the distance with long strides. Tifa and Gwen, shorter, had to keep their legs pumping to keep up. As they traveled, Tifa took in the shantytown of Sector 5, which looked more... upscale.

Admittedly, Tifa had only been in one shantytown so far, but Sector 5 seemed... richer... and less rusted. She'd heard people say Sector 7 was the poorest of the poor slums, nothing like the relatively pristine Sector 2, but she hadn't realized the fine gradations of being poor until this very moment. Sector 5's buildings were rough and practical, like 7's, but were clearly of sturdier materials than Sector 7 could usually scrounge up; she even saw a few genuine brick buildings. The paths between buildings were nicer, too; just as crooked as 7's, but there were more gravels spread between them to keep the dust down.

Otherwise, though, it was much like Tifa's new home. The mix of people was mostly the same, if leaning slightly more towards Wutai heritage, compared to Sector 7's fairly even composition, and the smells and sounds familiar; Corelian curry and frying Chocobo from restaurants, grease and oil from weapon shops, the sound of a Descendant preaching in the background, though the higher pitch indicated a woman instead of a man, saying something Tifa didn't quite hear about asphodels.

The crowd parted for Sephiroth like water before a prophet, to her surprise; she heard _Champion_ whispered on a dozen breaths. What the hell did that mean? People were acting... not unlike they'd acted when she'd had Cloud with her, if she was being honest. In those first days in Sector 7 with Cloud, the way they'd looked at him first and judged her through the lens of their respect for him... that was how they looked at her now, they saw Sephiroth first and judged her on the company she was keeping.

And apparently, they were inclined to think her company _fine,_ it inclined them to think well of her. A few people were obviously jealous, but the rest seemed to think that if Sephiroth was with her, she must be okay... though not a few took a second glance at her eyes, and were surprised... which was exactly how it had happened with Cloud.

_Deja vu_.

They sped through the town, to a building with The Leaf House Orphanage written on it in some child's enlarged scrawl, the kids waving at Sephiroth as he passed, him waving back distractedly. He'd sped up as they grew closer, actually running now, and as they passed the orphanage a familiar smell tickled Tifa's nose- a scent she'd slept among for three days. The low chocolate of his flowers, but mingled now with others- rose and tulips, lillies and ferns... and a sound she had not heard since she got to Midgar, that of natural running water, burbling in a brook...

They stepped into a long cave, winding, a natural rock formation here, and when they reached the end, they stepped out into paradise.

It was a garden, a huge one, just orderly enough to be manageable, with enough chaos to be natural. A river ran through the middle of it, emerging like an unexpected miracle from a gap in a pile of rocks and disappearing just as miraculously underneath the winding tunnel Tifa had just left. In the middle, in the course of this stream, the clean water gleamed in the sun lamp's light, little fish swimming about inside it as they went about their piscine business.

On either side of the stream was a joyful riot of plant life. Amongst the blooms, emerging from a homemade hive, were bees, buzzing between the blossoms, each taking food and drink from the flowers, in turn pollinating them, the ancient trade agreement evolution had let them work out with each other. Other insects flitted about, fulfilling their own duties and tasks, the little lives that were so vital to the world's proper functioning..

Plants of every variety grew here- flowers, in abundance, but vegetables, too, things to eat, in little rows and mounds. Corn, wheat, tomatoes, potatoes.... all here, every inch of usable land covered, a dazzling dance of biodiversity and food.

In the back, near the gap in the rock where the stream emerged like a blessing, were two fruiting apple trees, their branches entwined like the hands of old lovers, heavy in this July season with soon-to-be-ready crop. A snake slept in the lefthand tree, curled up protectively around the trunk, looking for all the world like a guardian of rare treasures from some ancient fable.

It was too much. The shock of seeing all this _life_ in _Midgar_ was like taking a punch unaware. Tifa skidded to a dead stop as Sephiroth and Gwen kept going, just _staring_ at this outburst of nature, this gleaming place growing in the shadow of Shinra. She had not seen so much green, so much _life_ , since... since Nibelheim, if she was being honest.

She stared, and didn't notice the house until she heard Sephiroth open its door. A great old building, clearly a well-loved and ancient home, its outside showing patch marks like the bandages on a prize fighter- this house had been through a few rounds with time, but it had not lost yet. Tifa could relate, and it helped her shake off the... _awe_... that the garden had created inside her.

She walked over, crossing a bridge over the river, still marveling at the world around her, at this... entire _area,_ this tiny spot that was a defiant fist raised against all of Midgar's sterilized emptiness.

She went into the open door, and found herself in a lovely little kitchen. Sephiroth stood inside, as did Gwen, both facing an older woman who was holding a cup of coffee- a _powerful_ cup, given that the smell of it alone was strong enough to wake the dead.

“ Hello, son,” the woman said, her face twitching into a smirk that Tifa had seen on Sephiroth's face, a shared family quirk. “ What are you doing, barging in here with Gwen? You finally find a woman to settle down with?”

“ _Mother_ ,” he said, then sighed. “ No. I was checking on you.”

“ I'm still here,” she said. “ Gwen's not a bad choice. I like her, she's mean. Balances all your niceness out. You're too much like my Abe, he was a sweetheart. I should have been the soldier, I never could figure out how I ended up a housewife. Cleaned one dish and that was it, I guess, I was doomed from that moment on.”

“ Eh, I'm not doing anything else,” Gwen said cheerfully. “ I'll marry him just to inherit this house and garden.”

“ See? She's even practical,” Elmyra said, before hacking out a laugh, sounding like a friendly witch in a kid's fairy tale. She headed to her table. “ Heh. But it's not like you to just check up at random...”

She sat, and looking up, finally noticed Tifa, standing awkwardly in the door.

“ Hmm, you've got another visitor,” she said, eyes narrowing as she looked at Tifa's slitted green eyes. “ Don't recognize this one... but I know those eyes. What's going on, son?”

He sighed. “ This is Tifa, mother,” he said. “ The one that fell...”

“ She lived, then. I knew SOLDIERs were tough, I've met that Descendant preacher we got in town now... but I would never have believed they could fall from the Plate like that and live...”

_I should say something,_ Tifa thought, but what would fit? _Be cool, be calm, be professional._

Tifa shrugged noncommittally after a moment, and said, “ Your son's healing did most of the work.”

“ He's good like that,” she said, with a smile. “ Good doctor, good farmer, good son. But... I don't think you jumped. Why are you down here, girl?”

“ Forgive me, mother, but we have a more immediate problem,” Sephiroth interrupted. “ Turks are after me- and not her. Me, specifically. Ms. Lockhart fought to protect me from them.”

“ Turks?” she said.

( And her hand trembled on the cup in her hand, though no one noticed.)

Sephiroth nodded. “ Yes. I don't know why they're after me- but they paid no attention to her. It was me they were after.”

_I should speak up_ , Old Tifa said.

_Shut up!_ came New Tifa's reply. _Less said, the better!_

_Maybe just one thing..._

“ They tried to take him alive,” Tifa said.

“ They would,” the older woman responded, and closed her eyes. “ Gwen, you're a good woman, and I do like you... but what I'm about to say's just for family. Would you step out? And take this Tifa with you. Find something for her to do, I know the town watch always needs a face punched in somewhere. I... I need to tell my son something.”

Gwen nodded. “ Come on,” she said. “ Let's leave'em to it.”

And Tifa walked back out the door, wondering what in the world was going on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter- the POV I GUARANTEE that none of you were expecting.


	20. The Fear of God

**Chapter 19**

**The Fear of God**

She is cold.

She has been cold for a long time. There was... the prey-thing that was  _ not _ prey, that was not predator, either, the thing-that-was-something-else . Defender-thing, war-thing, she has no words for it; she had the words, once. She has never thought like prey, but she had stolen some of their words, to hunt them, to play with them. Some prey is stubborn, some prey does not understand that its purpose is to be eaten, and she must mumble their mouthfuls back to them so that they will submit to be eaten.

They had words for the the thing-that-was-something-else, that had fought her so much. 

_Queen, Hero, Goddess... Shiva._

Just words. The prey of this world have so many words. Some instinct compels she-who-is-cold to know that word-prey is the worst-prey; better-prey is wordless, better-nurseries can be found in worlds that have no word-prey only wordless-prey. Good food good meat good eat, eat, _eat_ she is so hungry, she is so cold, she-is-cold-and-hungry.

She-who-is-cold-and-hungry whines in her cage, wordless sounds of distress, resembling noises she made once upon a time in her happy youth. In those ancient days, she had crawled over the world her father-mother-maker had sucked dry to give birth to her and her siblings, chewing the heaped meals of prey her parent-creator-caretaker had made for her, young teeth gnawing happily on the prey as her parent gazed happily down upon her.

Happy days of innocent youth, food and sleep and play-fighting with her siblings, before father-mother-maker gathered them, molded shells around them, and sent them out into the void with its dying breath, to dream away the distance between the stars and find new worlds to eat-devour, so she might give birth-send out children of her own-die at peace, a life cycle measured in eons and the death of entire planets. 

This was their purpose, this was what they were made for, ever since the first of them was created by unknown hands and named Deus; they were built to destroy worlds, and she-who-is-cold-and-hungry has never wanted anything more than to fulfill her purpose. It is right, she is a predator, prey is meant to be eaten; if it can be eaten, it is prey, and why would she deny them the right to fulfill their role? Prey that died uneaten, that was a sin, a sin on her, to not eat them, to let them die without purpose. Cruel.

She had landed here; she had been so happy, the warming fire of re-entry had woken her up, and she had salivated at this world full of food. Word prey, unfortunately, but she was clever, stole forms, stole words from their mouths, too. She had been smarter, once, when there had been more of her than this small, crawling mass; she is less now, she is  _ stupid, _ now, she-is-cold-and-hungry-and-stupid. Too much has been taken from her, the cruelties inflicted on her have stolen the words she herself once stole and the other things she once knew, the way numbers clicked together, language forms, cultures, clever tricks, all the prey-things she had acquired over her hunting.

But once...

Once, when she-was-warm-and-full-and-smart, she had learned prey-words, said right-words to trick word-prey into her mouth, to teach them their place. She had marched all across the westernmost continent of this world before swimming north, to eat word-prey there, getting smarter all the while.

But then...

Her. 

_ Queen, Hero, Goddess... Shiva _ . 

The thing-that-was-something-else, that she had once, stupidly, thought of as prey.  Ice in her hands and winter in her eyes, who said words that she-who-is-cold-and-hungry-and-stupid remembers in her nightmares.

(  _ No more will you hunt us. This Planet will  _ **_never_ ** _ submit. Be still, be broken, and be  _ **_gone,_ ** _ Calamity from the Skies! _ )

Then a numbness-worse-than-pain, numbness that stole everything from her, she-was-warm-and-full no longer.

Time had passed, a sensation she only understood in the vaguest way.

And then... the new ones came.

Someone freed her from the ice. Many someones, all in white-furs-not-their-own, , laboring with devices-stinking-like-smoke. The someones smelled like old word-prey, but... changed. Evolved. She had slept a long time in the numbness-worse-than-pain. New-prey, smaller, connection to their Planet less strong, mutated- but still warm, still prey. She had salivated, she was so hungry, staying alive in the ice had cost her all her fullness and she hungered. 

The new word-prey hacked away at the ice, and the numbness-worse-than-pain began to leave, and she dreamed of the toothsome reward she would give her accidental rescuers; such smart prey, freeing their predator, knowing they were meant to die and make her strong enough to give birth to children of her own, to repeat the cycle. Such good prey. The cycle, claiming them, as it should.

...She had not known what had accompanied them.

It had just been new-prey when she first saw it, making the same mistake she had made with  _ Shiva _ ; she had been wrong twice now, she should have learned from the first incident. It had a name, and even all her hurt could not make her forget it. When she had believed it to be new-prey, it had been around the other new-prey in their white-not-their-own-furs; those new-prey had called It a word she could not forget.

_Lucrecia._

Even thinking the word made the thing curl up and sob. Not-prey, not-prey, but not like  _ Queen, Hero, Goddess... Shiva _ , no,  _ Lucrecia  _ was not a thing-that-was-something-else, she was not something that she-who-is-cold-and-hungry had no word for. No, she  _ did  _ have a word for  _ Lucrecia _ .

That word was  _ predator _ .

She didn't know how the _Lucrecia_ -predator-thing hid her nature, but it was a perfect disguise, the huntress that she shared a world with was a masterful ambush predator. She smelled like new-prey, at first, before she began to smell like new-prey mixed with old-prey, around the time her eye changed color. She looked like new-prey, like young new-prey, vibrant-fertile-youthful-beautiful-new-prey, spoke new-prey words. 

She-who-was-cold-and-hungry-and-stupid had only learned that the  _ Lucrecia _ -predator-thing was a predator from experience, long and horrible experience. It was only when she had seen the teeth that she had understood.

She had tried to escape. She had tried to leave.

_ Lucrecia  _ had stopped her. There had been others with her, vague impressions of details left in her brainstem. A red cat-prey thing that summoned shadows, and a horrid chaos-flesh-prey, who had metal-that-spat-fire-and-pain in his hands, before they stopped being hands and cut her as claws.

But she had beaten both of them, tossed aside to be eaten later. No, it was the  _ Lucrecia  _ who brought her down, there had been... something  _ wrong  _ with her, she had tried to bite her flesh and found it poison in her mouth, she had been forced to spit out the mouthfuls of cyanide she had taken, the life inside her so pure and sterile she could draw nothing from it. Not-prey, not-prey,  _ predator _ , and the  _ Lucrecia  _ had two teeth, one for each hand, curved blades, singing-sharp, sharp-singing, slicing, cutting her, cutting her, cutting her.

_ Lucrecia _ had... she had taken her from the greater mass of herself... and she kept  _ cutting  _ her, she took half of her and she left half so one half could be used and the other half would regrow and then she'd cut her in half  _ again  _ and  _ again  _ and  _ again _ ... 

She had lost, and  _ Lucrecia  _ had put her in this cage, four empty metal walls and an empty metal ceiling and an empty metal floor, and she had never stopped cutting her. 

She-who-was-cold-and-hungry-and-stupid-and _ -hurting  _ curled up, and cried, and finally fell into fitful sleep, plagued by nightmares of  _ Lucrecia  _ and a whirring  _ click _ .

-

She slept. A new-thing, copied from prey-things. It made the pain lessen, passed the time, let her dream of better days in that odd, wordless way. When the nightmares finally let her go, she dreamed of food and warmth and knowing things, of she-as-she-had-been, not she-as-she-was.

A sound awoke her, filtering in through her stolen ears. A thunk, nearby, a sound she had grown familiar with over... however long she had been. Cruel, this place, crueler than the ice that brought numbness-worse-than-pain; at least there, she had only been vaguely aware of time passing. Here, each second cut at her, yet another cruelty of the _Lucrecia._

But that thunk, that was the closest thing to a good sound to hear in this place. It meant a small chute had dropped a round orb of food, a drop of prey-meat, wrapped in the soft green glow of this world's crystallized life. She had tried to escape up that chute, just once; but it shut, and the _Lucrecia_ waited until she quit to feed her, until she had almost died from starvation. She had never tried again; the punishment of hunger was too much to bear.

So, eagerly, she slurped forward, what had once been hair on the head of the old-prey whose face she'd stolen so long ago having been repurposed into tentacles. Borrowed teeth bit deep into the thing the new-prey called materia, these chunks of nourishment that were her only food. She bit, sucking it dry, cracking it open to sup on the innards, runs her tongue on the broken shards and crunching them down, too, desperate for anything after her enforced starvation.

Fire. Hot heat, the memories of this world able to live again with just a little bit of energy. Good. Her thiefed-tongue registered the taste as zesty spices, as blazing peppers, and for a few seconds she-was-warm-and-eating.

Then she was done, and she was not-full, and the warmth faded. A flicker of memory passed through she-who-was-growing-cold-and-not-full; after a feeding, that was when the predator would come, she would cut her again, cut her into pieces, take her. Not after every feeding, sometimes two-three-once-four feedings had passed before cutting, but _always_ after _a_ feeding was cutting done.

She glanced around, afraid, around the corners of this tiny, tiny metal box, dead-metal, no magic, no remnant of the Planet inside, nothing on which to feed, sterile and stainless. She knew nothing of where she was now, not like she had before, when she had been aware of the tower, of being in some place the new-prey and the  _ Lucrecia _ -predator-thing had both dwelled within. 

That had been lost when her head had been taken and she was separated from the rest of her, she did not know where it was,  _ where's the rest of me  _ had been the last thought she'd thought with all her wisdom before her mind was torn to shreds by her separation.

She wept, but nothing happened, and she was allowed to go back to sleep, whimpering as nightmares gripped she-who-was-cold-and-fed-and-stupid-and-hurting-and- _ scared. _

-

The days passed like that. Sleep, thunk, feed, fear, sleep. Sleep, thunk, feed, fear, sleep.

Sleep, thunk, feed, fear, sleep.

Sleep, thunk, feed, fear, sleep.

-

Sleep.

Thunk.

Feed.

Earth taste. Rock taste. Rare flavor, good flavor, best flavor; most closest to warm-prey-taste, lifeblood of world, it was good and savory. She ate it, sighing with joy, almost-full, that wasn't so bad, she would agree to never be full again and take almost-full forever if it meant she would never be _empty_ again. The joy of a full belly was not worth the horror of an empty one.

But even without fullness... she was bolstered, strengthened. She might- she could get out now, _Lucrecia_ -predator-thing had made a mistake. _Lucrecia_ had made a mistake!

The prisoner, who now remembered that the humans of this world called it _Jenova_ , was empowered too much by this meal, by all the meals she'd had without the _Lucrecia_ cutting her. Such a perfect flavor, such a rich dinner; she could regrow herself, and begin again, take this world. _Lucrecia_ had made a mistake.

But she would not play this time, she would no more season her meat with pain, nor steal words to speak to them. She had been cold-and-empty-and-stupid-and-hurting-and-scared; no one deserved that. She had never been so little, so lessened, before; even the numbness-worse-than-pain was not so bad, she had slept, she had been cold but she had not been _scared_.

She would devour this world, and teach her children to do the same to the worlds they landed on, for that was their purpose from the first; but she would not be cruel. She was a predator, but she was not a predator like the _Lucrecia_ , she would not torment her prey. They would die swiftly, and would not suffer.

She stretched, grew, beginning to form a body again... but another flicker of memory went through her. Hadn't she been fed such richness before? Hadn't she had this thought before, that the _Lucrecia_ -predator-thing had made a mistake?

After every such good feeding, when she was convinced the _Lucrecia_ had made a mistake, hadn't there been-

A noise, a whirring _click_ , from all around her, a sound she heard over and over again in her nightmares, even when there was not enough of her left to remember just quite _why_.

The walls of her cage exploded into a confusion of blades and claws and weapons, each mounted on long robotic arms, each made of that sterile metal she could not eat. Light, tightened into a single searing beam, slicing through her from three separate ports, carving her body into portions. She struck, but she was still too weak, she was _always_ too weak, tentacles feebly wrapping about the instruments of her death, tugging n them in vain. Even as her brain registered what was being done to her a great ripping sawblade carved that memory out of her skull, slicing and slicing and slicing.

_Lucrecia_ was cutting her again.

Some part of her was left alone, alive, to skitter away, to run, to hide, crying from the one eye it had left, using what was left of the rich food it had eaten to regenerate the stolen face it had been wearing when it went into the ice. The rest of it was cut, frozen with quick sprays of sub-zero gases, and stuffed into sterile jars, the jars sealed, then resealed into larger sterile jars, then again, again and again, seal upon seal upon ward upon geas, until the septiseal was complete.

The Jenova that was left in that room did not know its name, and as the jars and arms retracted, it forgot them, mind too small to hold the memories, only flickers remaining, and this single understanding.

She is cold.

-

She is cold.

She is moving; she can sense it in the way the world around her rattles. She is... in darkness, in some cold-and-dark-place... Her memories trace back; a cold room, then the cutting light and the cutting metal and the freezing gas, stuffed into a jar...

She is in that jar. A part of her was left in that room, but _this_ part, it has most of her brain; she can think. Her name is Jenova, and she can think, she can think and feel and she-is-cold-and- _scared_.

What new horror awaited her, what had _Lucrecia_ come up with?

Her jar is sterile, but she tries to break out anyway, flails with veins and hair turned tentacles, trying to make weapons to crack the walls... but she has no resources, she-is-hungry, she has nothing. She settles down, exhausted, and the rocking motion that indicates she is moving, and for all her fear, she sleeps, her dream plagued by nightmares of a whirring _click_.

-

She is cold.

She stirs awake, bleary and disoriented and hungry. She is no longer moving; what is happening...?

The first seal is opened.

She can hear it unsealing. She crouches tight against a corner of the round jar, weeping, knowing the executioner's axe is falling, hoping against hope that someone would stay the hand of the reaper.

The second seal is undone.

She cries, she begs the universe for mercy, mercy she knows she would not give if the circumstances were reversed; still, she begs for it- and she finds that there is no sympathy for this devil.

The third seal is opened.

It grows closer.

She can hear outside now; a chant. A chant. Her sense of life activates, she can feel the light and see the presence of new-prey around her; word-prey, they are, speaking ancient words.

The fourth seal is unleashed.

Sshe _knows_ that tongue, the oldest memories left in her neurons whimper, that had been the tongue the _Shiva_ had spoken; her enemy, her enemy, she hears the words without understanding them, even with her mind translating that ancient tongue.

_ **Come, come, O come, Glorious** _

_ **Do not let us die, Generous** _

_ **Come, come, O come, Glorious** _

_ **Do not let us die, Generous** _

The fifth seal is unmade.

The words echo like thunder in the sterile jar, there are only two seals protecting her, she can sense more- more  _ life,  _ there is something here, something-like-her but it is  _ not-her,  _ it is mutated her, she senses them all around her. She puts tentacles over her ears and squeezes her eyes shut and she screams, but she can still hear them singing, the holy rolls on and on and she cannot withstand it, she is trapped on sacred ground and like every sealed devil, she can do nothing but suffer.

Jenova wept.

_ **Fate, angelic and full,** _

_ **Chosen for the cause** _

**_ Cold and calm inside _ **

**_ With peace and love _ **

**_ Come, come, O come, Glorious! _ **

_ **Do not let us die, Generous!** _

_ **Come, come, O come, Glorious!** _

_ **Do not let us die, Generous!** _

The sixth seal was broken; and then, there was light.

Bright, burning sunlight, she flinched as it penetrated the jar like a lance, even with her eyes shut tight. She trembled, opened her eyes just in time to see hands, reaching down to the transparent jar she was stuck in and lifting her out.

Revealed to her blinking eyes were her captors: two new-prey, with pale blank eyes with no pupil, wearing white robes. Similar folk were all around her under the noonday sun, bright and hot, but she was still cold, she-is-cold-and-hungry-and-stupid-and-hungry-and _-scared, scared, scared_. They were gathered in a circle about her, the white-robed pale-eye new-prey, eyes like maggots' skin, robes the pure white of killing frost, a thin line of the same pink as flayed meat around the edges as trim.

They stood in a circle around her in a field of flowers, that same pale-white with pink drops in the center, placed there gently like drops of diluted blood. Mountains loomed in the distance, fog about their tops; this was the West, she knew this place, she had been here once, when these mountains were young, but the knowledge did her no good now.

There was a great steepled building before her, topped with an image of one angel's wing. The bell atop the church rang; once, twice, thrice. From inside, an organ groaned, its sonorous sound in tune with the circle's singing.

The bell rang again. Once, twice, thrice.

The door was pulled open by two pale-eye new-prey in white robes, and from it emerged...

No. No, no no no no no, _no..._

_Queen, Hero, Goddess..._ _ Shiva _ _._

She floated, her magic so strong, so cold, but... but there was something wrong... a manacle on her neck, that hadn't been there before. Jenova looked, again- her ancient enemy, she had been... _chained._ One would never see it past her jewelry, save that Jenova had seen _Shiva_ in her nightmares for centuries beyond count, every detail burned by frost into her brain...

_Shiva_ was chained. What... what force could chain _Queen, Hero, Goddess..._ _Shiva_?

_ Shiva _ approached, and her great face seemed sorrowful, an expression she had never directed at Jenova before. The two new-prey holding her sealed jar fell to their knees, raising their prisoner high.

The church bell tolled one more time, and Shiva reached forward, taking the lid in her hands.

The seventh seal was loosed.

She tried to escape, but cold hands gripped her, _Shiva,_ her enemy was chained but she was still strong enough to grab hold of her, she had her, the cold froze her attempts to flee, mutate, turn, change, escape, escape... 

She struggled as Shiva turned, and held her out, presenting her towards the church's doors.

The choir reached crescendo.

_**Aerith! Aerith! Aerith!** _

Out something emerged. New-prey?... no, old-prey, no, both were wrong. Old-prey and new-prey, she smelled like _Lucrecia_ -predator-thing, and she could smell the _Lucrecia_ all over her, this was not the _Lucrecia_ but it was her spawn, as assuredly as Jenova had been her father-mother-maker's. The thing the pale-eye new-prey were calling Aerith held a staff in her hands, a staff whose top was made of sharp blades in the shape of angel's wings. A single great feathered wing, white as snow, emerged from the Aerith's left shoulder, and the circle shouted for joy, some leaping, clapping, noises of joy, praying hallelujah. She trembles in fear of their God.

_**Aerith! Aerith! Aerith** _

The Aerith- _Lucrecia_ -spawn stepped forward, and on her face was a gentle smile, beautiful and sweet. She raised her angel-winged staff high and stabbed it into the ground; more new-prey approached, and from a golden box decorated with images of huntsmen and deer, withdrew what looked like a fresh heart, a heart that smelled to Jenova like old-prey- pure old-prey, not the mixed old-prey new-prey of the _Lucrecia_ or her spawn.

They held the bloody thing in their hands, lifting it to the _Aerith_ , an offering and a sacrifice; she acknowledged it, then put her hands to the blades on her staff, slicing down hard. She _cut_ herself, more cutting- what was wrong with the _Lucrecia_ and its spawn, why all this cutting?

But cut herself she did, cutting the palms of her hands. Her blood- it smelled _wrong_ , wrong, what _was_ this thing, this thing-that-was-something-else, something, everything was _wrong_.

The Aerith held out her bleeding palms, one to the heart, one to Jenova between Shiva's hands, and Jenova saw... _movement_ inside those red stigmata. Something was writhing inside them...

A vine, curling the flesh open, before it spread it wide, and more vines shot out, thorned briars with green leaves and white flowers with pink centers, blossoming as the vines grew. Two lashed out, one to the heart, one to her, wrapping about her head, a crown of thorns, penetrating her, _cutting_ her, she screamed...

_Don't fight me. It's okay. Join me. Become one with me._

A voice in her head, replacing the voice-in-her-head-that-was- _her_ , soon there would be no more voice-in-her-head-that-was-her, just a voice-in-her-head-that-was- _not_ -her, and she would obey that voice forever. She would not be there. It promises her warmth, it promises happiness, she resists, she fights back, she...

_You always fight so hard! I'm sorry about this, I know it hurts. But birthing always does. Being reborn hurts. But don't be afraid. You can't help being a monster. But I'll save you. And you'll help me save_ _ her _ _ \- and everyone else!  _

No, no, the voice, it is so beautiful, it promises so much- but she- she wants to be, she wants to be herself, she cannot fight this willpower or this intelligence, it is eating her alive, is this what it is like to be eaten? She had not known, she had not known, she had not known. She thought this was natural. She had thought they knew, that they knew they were supposed to be eaten, she-is-wrong. She is prey and she knows at last and at the last the terror that gripped all her prey, as this predator sinks its teeth into her, and she is sorry.

_ Shh, shh, it's okay. I'm your friend. You don't believe that now, but you will. You'll become a part of me, and we'll make up for all we've done. We'll save the  _ _ world _ _ , Calamity from the Skies. We'll make it all right. _

She is cold, under that bright sun, the fear of God has been put inside her and this God will take her and break her and she is so scared she is so cold she is so hungry she hurts she is cold...

_ And then we'll go to every world in the universe, and we'll make  _ _ them _ _ right, too. _

She is warm.

( She is lost.)


	21. INTERLUDE III: Following the Little Breadcrumbs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The following being a Letter Lucrecia received from her husband, all formatting preserved in original ordering.
> 
> EDIT: I edited this chapter the day after I originally posted it; on review, I realized Vincent was not being as professional as I intended him to be, and rewrote this to accomplish that- as well as make it a little more clear who, precisely, was on the chopping block.

**INTERLUDE III**

**Following the Little Breadcrumbs**

**FROM THE OFFICE OF**

**MR. VALENTINE CRESCENT**

**HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ADMINISTRATIVE RESEARCH**

**WARNING**

**WARNING**

**WARNING**

**THIS DOCUMENT IS MARKED**

**EYES ONLY**

**  
AND IS INTENDED FOR**

**DR. LUCRECIA VALENTINE**

**HEAD OF THE SCIENCE DEPARTMENT**

**ALL OTHER PERSONNEL EXPOSED TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT ARE TO REPORT THEMSELVES IMMEDIATELY**

**FAILURE TO DO SO SHALL RESULT IN TERMINATION OF EMPLOYMENT AND IMMEDIATE IMPRISONMENT WHILE AWAITING TRIAL, AT WHICH PUNISHMENT MAY VARY, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO DESIGNATION AS A TEST SUBJECT, THE DEATH PENALTY, AND FINES**

**WARNING**

**WARNING**

**WARNING**

_My love,_

_While people our age are often accused of being less adaptable to the times, I assure you that no nostalgia for the good old days of physical paperwork compels me to send this information to you in a personally-delivered leter._

_Instead, I'm afraid our security situation warrants it._

_As I told you before we left for vacation, I intended to use three separate IT teams in an attempt to figure out whether or not Shinra has a hacker, and if so, who this mystery individual is. To avoid echo chamber decisions and ensure independent analysis, none of the teams were aware anyone else was going to check the network, and they worked on it alone and in sequence._

_One was our asphodel-treated Turk IT team we've used to cover our tracks for years. I additionally hired, using funds from one of our black accounts, a very highly recommended independent tech specialist from Corel named Sinder Roze, specialized in video/audio software; she helped build most of the VR and audiovisual equipment the Golden Saucer uses._

_To these two I added a third group, the Phantom Thieves, an underground movement of hackers from Midgar's Plate- mostly outcast teenagers- who I fooled into believing I was a representative of AVALANCHE, tasking them with hacking Shinra and looking for backdoors and the presence of other hackers._

_While none of them were able to identify our mystery hacker, they did confirm to me that something is going on. Each IT team reported that it was clear someone was rifling through the company's files, even if they were unable to find out who- and given that they were working from different angles, with different access, it's unlikely they were tripping over each other's work. _

_There are too many inconsistencies in the network, too much unusual activity, for it to be bad luck. Our hacker is tremendously skilled, but they can't hide all evidence of their work; we can trace these little bits and bytes of data to see that they exist, if nothing else- and the mere fact that they exist has its own implications._

_The most obvious and telling sign is that Palmer's ID is logged onto the network far too often for someone who spends most of his time in Rocket Town; while we do have network connections there, the logins are coming from within Shinra HQ._

_ Those implications led all three groups to come to the same conclusion individually, which strongly indicates it is correct; they have jointly theorized that someone within Shinra HQ has Palmer's ID, and is using it, along with custom scripts and codework, to increase their access, to snoop through the files and watch through the cameras. They couldn't figure out how much access this person has, but evidence of strange activity and high information-use at bizarre times is everywhere in the network; each team reported that, given the skill displayed in leaving so few traces, there was no good reason to assume the mystery hacker didn't have full access. _

_While it was a risk letting them have so much access, neither of the two independent groups gave any indication they came to any understanding of our real purposes or business. Sinder Roze I paid in full, and I now have a Turk team watching her- but I don't expect real trouble. While she has a noted tendency to enjoy disruption, she also has a crystal-clear work ethic, and no particularly strong moral ideology._

_If she does decide to turn on us, the Turk team will kill her in such a fashion as to pin her death on the Saucer Slayer, and dump her body in the prison beneath it._

_As for the Phantom Thieves, once the group reported back to me, I liquidated them. I did so in person to make sure no mistakes were made, then expanded elimination operations to their families and known associates. The group had poor basic operational security- one rather loud-mouthed individual in the group had even revealed their identity publicly several times- so basic confidentiality required such an expanded operation._

_Thankfully, those same issues with secrecy means the group's membership, and affiliates, were well-known in the local area; it was simple to have Turks spread a story in their neighborhood that their families had all moved at the same time, pulling up stakes quickly after mysteriously coming into a large amount of money. I'm hoping to use them as scapegoats, as I'll explain below._

_I know your immediate concern will be the attention paid to so many disappearing at once, but I reassure you that it is unlikely. Most of their relatives and affiliates were disreputable in some way, or otherwise unimportant- a disgraced medical professional, a coffee shop owner, a tabloid reporter regarded as sleazy even by her kind's standards._

_The most important individual was a former politician of some esteem- but even he was so burdened with scandals as to be effectively no one. A full list of casualties is attached to this report._

_One did catch my attention. She put up much more of a fight than I was expecting, with an old machine gun and a whip- of all things. Her determination and grit struck me as Worthy, so I spared her. She is in Deepground now, awaiting whatever purpose you seek to give her after treatment with asphodels. I personally suggest she be placed in SOLDIER; she's at the right age for it._

_Currently our Turk IT team is scanning the network for any documentation involving our own work, and editing it to make things harder for our electronic voyeur. Obviously we've done a fairly good job of not leaving much on the network to find to begin with, but making sure costs us nothing and might be worth much._

_Specifically, here's what I've done:_

      1. _The D-Project_

        1. _Not that we have much on the server about this, but we have been using Shinra's money to finance it; we're deleting those records. Obviously this is the one area where the most danger of being caught exists, but if anyone catches on to the discrepancies, we can blame it on our mystery hacker.   
  
As a precaution for that very scenario, I'm having falsified backups inserted into the system that make it look like the hackers I liquidated were the culprits. That was why I spread the tales above; any investigation will reveal the sudden “move” each family made after supposedly receiving a great deal of gil, and will be lead to the wrong conclusions.  
  
It helps that the Turks would be tasked with investigating this matter if it was noticed, so we would be able to direct it to that end._

      2. _Northern Continent, Corel Desert, and Undersea Excavations_

        1. _Again, primarily financial, same treatment as above._

      3. _Deepground/SOLDIER/Argento Program/Tsiviets_

        1. _Again, mostly financial records. Rather than outright deletion, shifted the numbers and all of our purchases for the Tsiviet Enhancements into an account in SOLDIER's finances; it will look to outsiders like someone in SOLDIER is embezzling.  
  
This way, if anyone notices anything, we can pin the blame on Hollander; President Shinra hates him so much he won't even question it. And as an additional benefit, Hollander will be dead!_




_Obviously we never put anything on the server that was truly damning, but there is enough incidental evidence on the network to justify the extra effort to keep it clean._

_I'm preserving the original records in paper format, of course; no reason to lose the info. You'll receive those files as soon as I am done. It's rather surprising how much we had on the server! I've already filled a few boxes. Even being careful, decades of work produces a lot of records. I'm moving all such boxes to Deepground at earliest opportunity._

_That leaves the identity of our uninvited guest. There is no strong evidence, but I believe we have enough evidence to deduce a culprit._

_I believe Mr. Wallace is the most likely candidate._

_The facts support the theory. Our mystery hacker must be someone who works in the building, but has lots of free time and privacy both. They would need those to enable them to pursue a side project of this scale without being caught. They must also be someone who has access to Palmer's ID, meaning it must be someone who has access to him. Given Palmer's lack of... caution, I doubt it would be difficult to get ahold of the ID once one had reached him, but they would need the access first._

_Few employees of Shinra have the time, the privacy, and access to Palmer... but Heads have all three. Of the Heads, most make no sense as our mystery hacker. It's not me, you, Nanaki, or Scarlet for obvious reasons; President Shinra has no reason to hack his own company. If he suspected we were up to something, he'd simply mobilize the rest of Shinra against us. Palmer can't be doing it; it's physically impossible, because he's in Rocket Town most of the time._

_That possibility has a further strike against it: it entails the idea that Palmer is secretly a genius, and I refuse to entertain that concept on sheer principle._

_That leaves Heidegger and Mr. Wallace as possibilities. Heidegger is not subtle enough in his nature, and he is too loyal to President Shinra; I don't think this is something he'd be able to come up with, much less execute._

_That leaves Mr. Wallace... who is alone in his office most days. Who has little to do after Urban Development's gutting after Reeve Tuesti. Whose motivations and true nature we've never been able to parse together._

_ I took the liberty of doing some preliminary investigations into Mr. Wallace. A small packet containing that information is also attached to this letter; of note is that even my early research leads some surprising places. Mr. Wallace has acquired  quite the catalog of book on magical theory, as well as some interestingly rare materia. _

_Keep that in mind, dear._

_On a personal note, I might have something special for your birthday next week. I didn't intend for it to be a birthday present, and I know how much you hate lucky breaks... but just this once, the luck appears to have worked out nicely for us._

_Yours forever,_

_-Vincent_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Sephiroth and Elmyra.
> 
> EDIT: Just to make it clear- The Phantom Thieves recruited everyone up to Futaba, and Akechi joined early (he's not a traitor in this timeline, just a bastard kid of a minor Shinra executive). 
> 
> They're all quite dead; Vincent was thorough. Most of the Confidants ate it as well. Vincent makes no mistakes in killing.
> 
> Ren, in this setting, stopped a minor Shinra executive from raping a woman, and got arrested for it; Ren was fairly pissed about it, and with the help of his boyfriend, Akechi, decided to get revenge. The Thieves had all been screwed over by Shinra and went about looking for other people who'd been hammered- unfortunately, they were, in fact, TERRIBLE at their jobs, lacking the Mementos to give them an easy way to convert people, and also lacking a narrative willing to let them get away with their frankly poor decisions.
> 
> Ryuji doomed them all with his loud mouth, to be totally frank.
> 
> Still, Ren was good at diplomacy, and the Thieves were effectively creating a proto-AVALANCHE support network on the Plate, which is no small feat. Makoto, always the most practical of the group, had been gathering weapons (and storing them at Anne's house, because her parents are never home); it was these weapons Anne used, alongside sheer bloody-minded willpower. 
> 
> Even after he shot her in the leg, she still kept fighting, and even set her own home on fire in an attempt to catch him in the flames. Vincent decided she was Worthy and took her alive; she's the only survivor, alongside Haru, who was never recruited, didn't know any of the others, and has no idea any of this was happening.
> 
> I also edited the "businessman" reference. I actually had the Sun Confidant in mind when writing about the "businessman", having forgotten he was a politician; I got him mixed up with Haru's dad.


	22. Once Upon a Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A conversation, between mother and son, about mothers and sons.
> 
> Buckle in.

**Chapter 21**

**Once Upon a Time**

Tifa and Gwen left, and the door swinging shut behind them had an odd sound of finality to it. Sephiroth stood in the kitchen before his sitting mother, smelling her mighty cup of strong coffee, with the sunlamps shining bright noon outside... and it felt wrong, this should be happening at night, or around a campfire. That would fit with his mother's face, with the conflicted and somehow _ashamed_ expression she was making, a look he had never seen on his mother's face before. Whatever she was about to say, it should be said on a dark and stormy night... 

But he was where he was, not where a story would dictate he go. Insects sang their buzzing songs in his garden, the wind rustled his plants, and his strange senses- kicking in as unease grew in his veins- detected that pregnant cat he'd never managed to catch, sleeping in his corn patch, dreaming of soft hands petting her fur, which the homeless feline had never had.

...Whatever she was going to say... it was going to change everything. He could feel it, the words, they had a gravity to them, like planets and supernovas bursting in the night. They were approaching, so heavy that he could feel it before they were said, cause and effect in reverse.

_I'm not ready for this,_ he had time to think, as his mother finally broke the silence.

“ I want you to know, before I say anything else, that I have always known that hiding this from you was wrong.”

His breath caught in his throat. Some part of him had always been convinced she knew more than she said, that she was hiding something, that the mystery of his senses and the Planet's voice in him big as a mountain had to have answers his mother knew; he'd been ashamed of it for years. Elmyra had taken in an orphan and raised it and loved it; he owed her better.

Yet that part had been right... 

(  _I don't know how I feel about that_ )

More words, the little accent his mother had always had growing thicker, the way it always did when she got emotional.

“ When your father was still alive... when we first got you... we agreed we'd tell you everything when you became a man. That was fair. That was a _good_ plan. As a boy, the knowledge would do you no good and much harm... but as a man, you could make your own decisions. I... maybe I shouldn't call Abe your father... but he deserves the title more than I deserve to call myself your mother. Abe would have... I...”

“ Mother,” he said, on instinct wanting to soothe the pain he saw written all over her face, the grief that she'd never talked about, sitting in her heavy as a stone since her husband's death.

“ In a moment,” she said- no,  _begged_ , she was pleading with him, eyes soft and hurt. “ Please. No words, not yet. I... I'm  _weak_ , son... no, Sephiroth. I don't have a right to call you son. Your father, he was a stronger person than I've ever been, for all that he was quiet and I've always had a temper. I'm fire, all hot heat until I burn out, but Abe... he was water, he yielded all the time but you never could actually  _move_ him. He was so  _strong._ If he'd lived, he'd have told you about this, he would have listened to all my worries and then he'd have made me do the right thing. When he died, I lost the better part of myself.. all the better parts of myself.”

She turned tear-filled eyes to him, and his heart fell through his stomach.

“ Everything but you. You've been the only thing I had left, and I've clung on like a parasite, for far too long, too scared to lose you to do what was right. I'm sorry.”

She let out a shaky breath, and sipped her coffee from shaking hands, and only her command to stay silent kept him from speaking up.

When she spoke again a moment later, she was quieter, calmer, her flame turning to ash.

“ That was the old plan. Me and Abe would tell you the truth when you were a man. When you were young, at best it would just hurt, at worst it'd prompt you to run off or do something stupid, maybe get killed. But as soon as you were a man, though, you'd have a right to it. Abe's wisdom. We were going to prepare you for it, we had all these plans... I've fucked it up. He died, and it broke me, and I've fucked up everything we thought of.”

A single hot tear, running down her cheek, as she fought with herself; Sephiroth reached out a hand, to comfort her; but she put a hand up, gently pushed him away.

“ No, don't- not until you know,” she said, stifling a sob. “ I- you need to know, first. And judge this old woman for all her mistakes.”

She dabbed at her eye with one of the table's napkins, and Sephiroth thought about how he'd bought that little wooden holder from a local carpenter, just for her; she'd always liked little wooden things, and anything made with rustic materials and one's own hands.

“ Sorry, I... I know you'll leave, after I tell you all this. You'll have to. And I should have told you years ago, but then I'd be alone, and you were all I had. I kept telling myself I'd wait just one more year, one more year, until one more year became... well, you've been a man for years now, and I'm only telling you now because I have to.  _Damn_ the Turks, damn Shinra, they took my husband and now they're taking my boy!”

Her face flickered through a dozen emotions as she wiped fiercely at new tears; Sephiroth was left shocked and horrified. He'd never seen her like this before; his mother was a woman of fiery disposition, but he'd never seen her passions conflict so much before, never seen her fire burn  _herself_ .

She finished wiping her face, blew her now-runny nose on the napkin, and chucked the resulting ball at the trashcan in the kitchen's corner... missing completely.

“ Fuck,” she said quietly. “ Whatever. Can't even throw things away right.”

She turned back to him. 

“ I won't lie to you about why I didn't tell you; I won't... it'd be easy to say I did it because I love you and I wanted to protect you, and the first part of that  _is_ true, I  _do_ love you... but I didn't do it to protect you. I'm a coward, but I'm  _not_ a hypocrite. I kept this from you to protect  _myself._ Because once I tell you- you'll have to leave. You'll leave me, like my husband, and I'll be all alone in this big house...”

She was silent again, silent so long that Sephiroth found his tongue despite her command, found it in himself to speak. 

“ Mother, I-”

“ Wait, please,” she begged again, but calmly, her passion finally burning itself out. “ Sephiroth... you need to know this, I'm sorry. I'm trying not to say it, I'm running away from it again, the way I've done for years. So... I... there's a book. Go upstairs. In your room, on top of your bookshelf on the left.  _What is Mako?_ A doctor named Gast Faremis wrote it, and I've made sure you kept it, even... even when I was too afraid to tell you the truth. Get it.”

He reeled, surprised. “ What-”

“ Dammit, boy, I told you to stop interrupting me!” she said, and  _that_ was more like her, it was almost settling to hear her be a bit snippy. “ Just... please. I'll try to toughen up while you're gone, maybe get through this conversation without beating around the bush all damn day.”

She took a drink, looking at him but past him, into her memories, and he had so many  _questions..._ but the answers were coming, if he would do what she said first. He walked off, feeling hollow and mechanical; his head was not empty, but instead so full it had deadlocked. The book, suddenly so important, his memory recalling what he remembered of it; a treatise on the mako energy of the Planet, and on the Lifestream, even if Gast had never called it that.

Sephiroth had mostly picked it up because it had been written by Dr. Gast. The very first Head of the Science Department, before immortal Dr. Lucrecia had taken the position- and the man who had invented vaccines. A hero, and for Sephiroth, back-alley and backwoods doctor, a man he looked up to, for all Shinra had done wrong Gast had done so much right...

But what did it mean, for his mother to make sure he kept it? What secrets were in it?

He reached the top of the stairs when the tension inside him was suddenly unbearable, he went from walking up the stairs to almost hurling himself towards his room, almost breaking his fool neck, almost hurling his door off its hinges. In, in, moving faster, frantically searching, knocking books off- no, no, where was it, where was it- 

There.

He grabbed it, the cover a simple thing- white letters on a green background. _What is Mako? by Dr. Gast Faremis_. Even as he read them, he felt a surge from the Planet; love, mingled with sorrow... and the strangest sensation on his skin accompanied it. Cold, like an icicle touching him, and the crisp clean smell of fresh northern snow, there and gone even as he felt it.

He paused as that surge went through him. What did this mean, what did this  _mean?_ The Planet, what did it know, why did he think of  _north_ as that passed through his shuddering spine...

He closed his eyes, and shoved those thoughts away, even as he let the Planet's emotions roil through him.

_The Planet can't answer. Mother can._

Walking now, forcing himself to go slow down the stairs, trying not to leap down, the tension rising and rising, back to the kitchen and completely unable to sit for fear he'd collapse, standing before his mother with that little book in his hands, that felt heavy as iron.

“ Hold on to that,” Elmyra said.

“ Why?” he asked, the word tumbling from his lips, the word that summarized all his questions.

“ Because your father wrote it,” Elmyra answered him, and Sephiroth's world fell out from under his feet.

He did not say the next word, so much as it fell out of him.

“ ...What?”

His voice sounded very small in his own ears.

Elmyra sighed, closing her eyes. “ Let me tell you how I met your mother, Ifalna Faremis.”

She was silent by choice for a moment, gathering her thoughts; Sephiroth was rendered mute, silent by circumstance, unable to process anything she'd just said, hoping he could recover in time to hear what she said next. He'd heard of hanging on every word before, but he felt like he was gripping on with only his fingernails; he leaned forward unconsciously, mind racing and still all at once.

When she spoke, he was so hungry for his words he almost starved in the pauses between sentences.

“ It was the autumn of 1988, with the old way of keeping things- before they changed the calendar. Me and your father- Abelard- couldn't have children- well, you already know he was infertile. I didn't want to take any of the options that were available. I'd either have his kid, or we'd have one that was stranger to both our flesh; I loved him too much to go for half-measures. And besides, I'm a Gainsborough; what matters is the land and the name, not the blood. Half the reason I married my Abe was that he was willing to take my last name.”

A sip of coffee that took a thousand years.

“ We'd just come back from a day's work. He was a Shinra security guard, I was a switchboard operator. This was twenty-plus years ago, after all; the network of Shinra wasn't quite as strong in those days. They needed humans to operate the phone lines. We'd come back by train from our jobs on the Plate.”

“ The train was stopped in Sector 7, right before it would have gotten us home. There'd been trouble on the line; an earthquake, of all things, and here in Midgar, where the ground never shakes. Minor, no real structural damage- and no Pillar damage either, thank the Planet- but the tracks were screwed up. We were stuck in Sector 7.”

“ Walking back would have been dangerous; most of the route was fairly safe, but one part wasn't. One part was so bad, in fact, that it meant you _couldn't_ walk back- the Train Graveyard. It wasn't safe back then, not like it is now. It was... bad. People reported seeing a spectral reaper riding a carriage with undead horses pulling it- never anything a person could confirm, of course, but rumors persisted. And what wasn't rumor were the deaths; kids disappeared and adults were found mangled. Chopped up. Monsters, Shinra said; ghosts, said the people.”

“ Regardless, the whole area was cursed, and nobody was going to try going through it, so everybody just piled off the train and wandered about, waiting. They'd fix the tracks eventually, and then we'd get home. Me and Abe grabbed a bench, and with nothing else to do, we discussed our upcoming adoption. We'd been looking at a few kids from the Leaf House- they didn't have much gil in those days, but they were still operating despite the shoestring budget. We'd narrowed it down to three, who I still remember; a quiet boy named Biggs, a Wutai girl who cursed a lot for a kid- which tickled me, frankly- and a dramatic little one named Andrea who loved music and dancing. All of them about... seven, I think, except for Biggs, who was younger.”

“ We were talking about them, sitting on that bench, doing nothing of much importance. I remember making a joke about how stupid his Shinra helmet made him look, always a little too big for him; we just sat there, holding hands, talking, kind of enjoying it almost like an outing, even if it was really just us waiting and being in love.”

She sighed, took another drink.

“ Then we heard the screams.”

“ At first, we thought that maybe whatever was in the Graveyard had come out- but it wasn't coming in the right direction for that. It was coming towards us from Midgar's center, not from the east. We turned to look, and it was easy to see what was causing the reaction; the crowd was parting around her.”

Sephiroth, under the crushing weight of his conflicting feelings, managed a feat worthy of ancient heroes by croaking out a single word.

“ ... _Her?_ ”

Elmyra nodded.

“ Yes... your mother.”

He swallowed against a throat dry as the desert.

“ She looked like a modern-day witch. Her long brown hair was going everywhere; it was stuck to her forehead from sweat and frazzled out around her like somebody was parodying a halo and dangling limp and ugly behind her. She had a hairclip, with a little materia piece in it, even, but it was just dangling atop her head, barely clinging on. She wore a hospital gown, all white, like she'd just had surgery; which probably explained her eyepatch.”

A flash of memory in Sephiroth's head, of a woman seen in a dream, missing its right eye.

“ She had a medical eyepatch over her right eye- you know the kind, you've used them on patients before, the white things with all the cloth bandage underneath. Or whatever that material is- I'm sure you'd know better than me.”

“ Anyway, she had one of those... but whatever wound was underneath it was bleeding. It had bled through, red staining the white, turning pink. Pink like a cut is, before the blood fills it; ugly color. Never understood why anyone liked fucking  _pink_ . It's a creepy color, the way white is; white bone and white maggots and white ashes, and pink's raw meat and... just...  _Wrong_ .”

Elmyra paused, tried to take a drink, before realizing her cup was empty.

“ Shit, I'm out. Sorry. I'm... I'm rambling. I don't  _want_ to tell this story... but I have to. Sorry. I'll try to focus.”

She took a deep breath, and began again.

“ She was barefoot, and her feet were bleeding, too; you could track her, follow her trail, a whole line of bloody little marks... I don't know how she wasn't screaming with every step. Her feet were shreds. She had glass in her in spots, staining that white hospital gown pink; I think she jumped out of a window, to be honest with you. She was half cuts, a ragged mess of a woman.”

“ But to be honest... what took my gaze the most was what was in her arms. Clutched tight in her grip was... you.”

He swayed where he stood, and did not notice.

“ She had a baby, a little baby in her arms. Couldn't have been older than four months, and that might have been a stretch. Littlest thing I've ever seen. And there were... there were  _things_ attached to that baby, metal bits, medical stuff. Needles and wires and tubes and circuitry; the kind of things you'd put on a dog you were experimenting on, not... not an infant. You weren't even weaned- I know, we had to feed you formula for a few months.”

“ You were crying, but it was this... _quiet_ kind of crying, like you knew nobody would care. Like you'd been crying for so long that you didn't have enough energy to really commit to it anymore. You just sort of snuffled, in-between little hissing intakes of breath. Even past people screaming and my own shock, I heard you making that noise, and it was the saddest fucking thing I've ever heard in my life.”

“ She was walking, talking to herself, holding you and bleeding, looking like an escaped mental patient who'd robbed a nursery ward. People were freaking out, falling all over themselves trying to get away from her, but me and Abe, we were too surprised. Just sat there like big dumb frogs on a log, targets painted over our heads. She just kept shuffling about on those broken feet, staring at everybody with that one emerald green eye, almost like the Mako eye of a SOLDIER, except it didn't glow. She shuffled and stared and muttered... I didn't hear what she said. I heard screams and I heard you. Abe, though, he listened, told me later what she'd said.”

“ She was saying  _he's a child, he's a child, he deserves better. Help him._ Don't know who she was talking to.”

A surge of emotion inside him, conflicted and overwhelmed feelings of sadness- but not his. The Planet's. The Planet was _mourning._

_Was she talking to you?_ Sephiroth thought.  _Was my mother talking to you, the way I am right now? Was she begging you for help? Is that why, despite your distaste for me, you still help, because my mother asked it of you..._

“ Then she saw us, and she... she  _ran_ to us. I, well, this is kinda funny to say now, fucked upas it is to laugh about anything that happened that day... but I tried to punch her. Pure reflex. A woman looking like that, coming at you at high speed, well, that's the kind of thing provokes a response. I tried to pop her one in the jaw.”

Somehow, a smile tugged at the corners of Sephiroth's mouth. Elmyra saw it, and grinned a little herself.

“ Yeah. She dodged it, and... and she told me  _Good. Strong, decisive, willing to fight. It's good, you'll be a good mother, Elmyra Gainsborough._ Freaked me out so bad I didn't try again. Didn't know the woman from a stranger, and she knew my name.”

The moment of humor seemed to have set free whatever cat had his tongue; he was able to speak.

“ She knew your name?” he asked.

Elmyra nodded. “ Not just mine. She turned to my husband, and said,  _Abelard Gainsborough; just, decent, willing to be kind. You'll be a good father._ And then she turned to us both, and said,  _I know you're seeking to adopt. You'll be good to him. Please, take him._ ”

“ And she held out the babe in her arms.”

Elmyra paused, ran her tongue over her lips to wet them again. Sephiroth waited, breathless.

“ We stared at her. While I was busy trying to figure out which of my million questions should be first out of my mouth, she talked again. Said  _His name's Sephiroth. Take him._ And I finally found my tongue, and I asked the first question in my head-  _is he yours?_ Cause, well... she looked like she'd run from a robbery. Like she'd taken you from your real mother, or maybe just nabbed you for her supper; witches eat kids, right?”

She shook her head.

“ But she paused, and said,  _He's... he's my son. He's my son. Sephiroth. Please, save him. She's coming._ And the fear in her voice... that woman was scared, more scared than I've ever seen anyone in my life. She was so scared that I didn't question it, I couldn't, not when I'd been thinking about becoming a mother myself and saw a mother's terror in her eyes.”

“ I held out my hands, and I took you from that bleeding woman's arms, and that's how you became my son.”

A tear ran down her face. Sephiroth, so in shock, could do nothing, just sit there, hear this unbelievable tale, that he nonetheless had to believe.

“ I held you, and my Abe, bless him, he asked  _where's the father?_ All the while I was just... holding you, you were so  _little_ . So little, and so much stuff in your skin... hell, when I took her, I saw there was some weird materia on your skin, some crystallized something or another, stuck to your skin. And all the while you just made that little snuffling cry. You were little and you were hurting.”

She was quiet for a moment, lost in the memories.

“ You said father asked her... about my...” Sephiroth tried to prompt, but hit a brick wall.  _Father_ was Elmyra's husband, a distant memory of growing up under his care; hazy, now, but he had called the man Father all his life. 

But now he knew of another father, of his... he didn't want to say  _actual_ father... biological, perhaps, but that felt too cold, too clinical, too impersonal.

“ He did,” Elmyra sighed. “ She said  _Dead. She killed him. She ordered her pet lion to do it and he leapt out of the shadows and killed him. She wanted his place; she killed him, she killed him. My Gast, my Gast..._ ”

Sephiroth looked down at the book he'd forgotten about in his numb fingers, read the name there, tiny beneath the title.  _Dr. Gast Faremis_ . His father. He'd had his father's book in his library, he had read his father's words all unknowing, idolized the man without having any knowledge of their connection... was  _this_ why he was a doctor? His father had invented vaccines, wasn't that something to think about, had he somehow inherited some impossible proclivity towards healing, bizarre and impossible as that seemed?

“ Yes,” Elmyra said softly, seeing his glance, as he returned to looking at her weary face. “ I looked it up later. Dr. Gast Faremis; first Shinra Head of Science. Supposedly killed by the Alliance with claw-like weapons, but for a while they tried to blame Red XIII- you know, that Red Lion that's always with Lucrecia Valentine... who inherited the job when Gast died.”

Sephiroth's mind, recovering from the hammer blow that had addled it, put two and two together.

“ Lucrecia Valentine...”

Elmyra nodded.

“ I'll get to her in a moment. Back to... to that day. With you in my arms, I did managed to ask a question, asked her who she was- I had so many questions- but once she handed you off, I'm not sure she was fully aware we were talking to her. She kept talking, but... I don't think it was to us. Or anyone else. More like what was in her skull was tumbling out through the crack of her mouth.”

“ What did she say?”

“ Words I've heard in my nightmares for years.  _She's coming... she wants my ancient blood... she'll hurt him, too. She's hurt him ever since he was born. I'll stop her. Run. She's coming. She's coming._ ”

Ancient blood- he'd  _read_ about ancients, the theory of an older civilization, pre-human inhabitants- supposedly with a tight connection to the  _Planet,_ no, no, it  _couldn't_ be...

“ Then she bent down, and I'll be damned, but the earth- it  _bubbled_ , like water, and out of it floated the purest chunk of materia you could ask for, pretty and perfect, just for her. She picked it up and stood, and that's when I noticed she had a bangle on, a fancy Shinra armlet; she already had two pieces of materia in it, green and red, and she put the new one in, nice as you please. She said  _run home to Sector 5. I'll protect you from the Graveyard, from Eligor... and I'll slow her down._ ”

“ I asked her who she was again, even as I stood up from that bench with you in my hands; the way she was talking, combined with the whole situation, meant I didn't have any resistance. Oh, I had  _questions,_ but remember- this all happened in  _seconds._ And there was this... something... inside me- like a voice, size of a mountain, that I couldn't understand, but it was begging me to believe her, pushing me to follow. Not words, but... a feeling? The way you describe how... the Planet talks to you.”

“ ...This is why you believed me,” Sephiroth said. Fourteen, thinking he had gone mad, trying to tell his mother what he felt, what answer he thought he'd learned from a book- and she'd accepted it, had not mocked her son, but said she understood.

_Wait,_ some part of his brain began to process,  _I wouldn't have been fourteen, not if she's telling the truth. She's talking about 1988, but I'm twenty-seven, if I was so little in 1988 then now in the 12_ _th_ _year of Shinra I'm only-_

“ Yes,” Elmyra said, interrupting his thoughts. “ I've heard it only the once, but I've never forgotten. The world itself wanted me to follow her, and Abe told me later he'd felt the same thing; so off we went, Ifalna leading the way. That's how I learned her name, by the by; took me three tries. I asked her again, as we were stumbling away, I was holding you and following her as we headed into that grim wreckage of the past, and she finally answered. What's your name, I say, and she said  _Ifalna. Ifalna Faremis._ ”

“ We didn't have much more time to talk. She walked in, and we heard... something... moving in the ruins... but she knelt again once we were fully inside, bowed her head, and prayed. More words that I can't forget, but not bad ones this time, not nightmares, just a prayer;  _Let the world's great gospel be spread, heal us, your children..._ ”

“ And I'll be damned, but as sure as you and I sit here... it started to  _rain_ .”

“ The sun lamps were still shining and we were weeks out from any rain, wasn't a cloud in the sky... but there was rain anyway, washing over us. And it... it was  _good._ I felt better than I'd ever felt, before that day or since. Invincible, almost, like I could take on the world... felt like being reborn, made  _new_ again. It washed over us and all the filth and rust of the locomotives and I swear to you, it even cleaned  _them_ , I watched it wash over those rusted hulks and it made them beautiful when it touched them. Everything,  _everything,_ was better, in those few seconds.”

She was lost for a second, remembering, and Sephiroth could almost see it in her eyes, the memory was so powerful... but his mother had always been a practical woman, and she was able to continue a second later.

“ It even healed you. Which was a surprise, because the first time the rain touched you, it sizzled, and you screamed. I guess there was just so much shit on and in you that the rain had to burn it out before it could start healing you, like cauterizing a wound. I even saw your baby blue eyes do that thing they do- the red, coming in from the sides, turning you violet-purple.”

He nodded, understanding; it happened a lot when he got hurt badly. Given the condition he had apparently been in, he wasn't surprised.

“ But right as I was about to panic and shield your little body, Ifalna stood and turned to you, put a hand to your head, and the rain stopped burning your skin and started healing you. Washed all that shit stuck to you off, even the materia or crystal or whatever that was, melting off, healing you. You finally stopped crying, the red left your eyes and you stopped giving that hopeless little cry... and you just fell asleep, right there in my arms.”

A little smile on her face.

“ Ifalna... she looked down at you, and she bent and kissed your forehead. That was the last time your mother ever saw you, and she... she smiled... I've never forgotten it. So sweet, so melancholy... she knew she'd never see you again. She said _at least I could save you._ ”

“ Then the moment passed and her gaze hardened, and she... she pointed. A way out. She made the earth move with that materia she'd been given, pushed the train wrecks out of our way- she was so  _strong_ . No wonder you're such a dab hand with spells. I've never heard of someone who wasn't a SOLDIER or something that could hurl around so much power. She moved the earth, and said it was safe, now, that Eligor was dead from holy water- whatever an Eligor was. Maybe that was the thing in the Graveyard back then.”

“ Anyway, it was dead, and she started muttering again, disjointed words; said  _she's coming_ and  _I won't go back._ Scared the hell out of me. We left, running, and she moved the world again- closed the way behind us, moved trains and rocks and everything to make it impassable. We were home free at that point.”

“ But I... I had to know, I had to know what was going on. So I gave you to Abe, and I went back, as he kept going. Once you were past the Graveyard the way back home was easy, after all; and the Graveyard, it wasn't bad, not anymore. Hasn't been, not since that day; it's still haunted, I've heard, but not in a bad way. Don't ask me how  _that_ works. People in Sector 7 are weird; tough, but weird.”

( Tifa and Gwen, some distance away watching for Turks, felt vaguely insulted and complimented both, but didn't know why.)

Elmyra tried to drink from her cup again, then snorted.

“ Dammit, forgot I was out. And I'm digressing again. I... I went back. I watched from the window of a train, I'd snuck in a rusted hole in the side of one... and I saw your mother's last moments. I saw her fight with Lucrecia Valentine.”

Lucrecia... Lucrecia again.

“ The woman who ordered my father's death... killed my mother?” he asked, and Elmyra nodded.

“ She did.”

Lucrecia... someone Sephiroth had never met... who had nonetheless taken so much from him.

A cold thing in his chest, a sudden kind of  _hatred,_ that he'd never felt before; his father and mother, taken before he could meet them, all by one person... 

It was small, but that first splinter of ice in his heart made him tremble, an icicle that could grow big as a glacier, someday.

_Lucrecia Valentine..._

“ Ifalna, your mother... she didn't run. She made her last stand there like the hero of some old story; by the time I got back, she'd made herself a little thing of flowers. Flowers, growing in that ruined and haunted ground, a whole riot of them- mostly reddish-purples, violet, like your eyes get. I guess she's where you get it from. She knelt among them, praying, her wounds healed by that rain of holy water, and she just... waited.”

Elmyra paused, pursed her lips. “ Well... she knelt and prayed and waited, but she did one more thing that I caught the tail end of. She took her hairpin out, the one with that little materia, and she put it into the ground. Saw the ground bubble, the way it had with the materia she took... always wondered about that. Maybe that hairband thing was more important than it looked.”

The Planet sent Sephiroth the most powerful surge of...  _something..._ a slamming wall of alarms, like someone screaming directly in his ears. He winced from the force of it, from a voice big as the sea, giving a monologue in words he did not know, but felt mattered.

“ You okay?” Elmyra asked, and Sephiroth nodded as the tide receded, the Planet's point made.

“ Yes,” he said. “ Please, continue.”

Elmyra almost said something, but then shook her head and kept going, letting the story's inertia carry her.

“ She waited... not long. Seven minutes, by my reckoning. Seven minutes, and then, from the train station's direction- probably following her bleeding footprints- in walked Lucrecia Valentine.”

Elmyra paused.

“ You know, the weirdest thing is, she looked so damn  _normal._ After everything, after all Ifalna's terror, I expected... I don't know, a demon, a dragon, some supermonster like the Leviathan the Alliance buried Junon with. Not... just some woman. Young, too, or at least young-looking, with a big ponytail and mismatched eyes. One was the same green I saw in your mother's skull, the other was brown. I... this sounds absurd, but I think... I think she cut out your mother's eye and stuck it in her own head.  _Why_ someone would do that, I've no idea, but I've got some facts to back it up. I did some digging- went to the Shinra Space and Aeronautics Museum in Sector 8 and the War Garden in Sector 9. Both have old photos of her. And Lucrecia's eyes, they weren't multicolored... not until 1988. She had two brown eyes in her skull in every photo before 1988, and one green, one brown, after. And it was the right eye... the same one Ifalna was missing.”

“ What...  _why..._ ” Sephiroth began to ask, but Elmyra shrugged.

“ No idea. But besides that, she was just... normal looking. She was in a shirt and pants. Didn't look like much, didn't even have her labcoat on; I guess she must have come running straight from her ivory tower on the Plate to chase that poor woman. She stood in front of Ifalna, who was just kneeling and praying in her little field of flowers, and she stood like she was coming by for a social visit. Was even smiling- until she saw you weren't there. She whipped her head around, looking, but by that point your father was halfway home and you were gone. She looked, and her face...”

“ She'd... Lucrecia... I see her face in my nightmares, Sephiroth. I hear Ifalna's voice talking of her and what she'd done and I see Lucrecia's  _face_ , even so far away I saw her smile twist _,_ her face change... it was fury. Fury that could kill, fury like I've never seen before or after, fury barely controlled. She was trying to look calm, but she kept...  _twitching..._ she was so close to losing it, you could see it, she was going to snap, like watching a lit fuse trail towards a bomb. Her smile fell off her face and all that was left was someone who was trying to hold in a rampage, like watching a monster try to keep a mask on.”

“ She asked one question. Three words, that I heard clear as day.  _Where is he._ She didn't ask, not really. Almost a statement, it was so terse and clipped. I guess Lucrecia knew that if she spent time on a single word more she'd lose what was left of her restraint.”

“ And your mama, she lied. She said, with glee in her voice,  _I killed him. You will never have him again._ Your mother pretended to have killed you, pretended to be  _happy_ to have killed you, to make sure Lucrecia would chase you no longer.”

“ And it worked. There weren't any more words after that. Lucrecia blew her top; she went from standing there twitching in anger to attacking in screaming fury so fast I didn't even see her move. That's how bad she'd wanted you, that's how angry Ifalna had made her... though I think... maybe Ifalna said that so Lucrecia  _would_ kill her. You weren't the only person she wanted to set free.”

“ Still, even if she had wanted to die... she fought. She fought like the witch I kept thinking she was, she threw spells strong as you'd hear about in a fairytale at the thing trying to kill her. Earth and air, that was her magic, and she fought with them better than I've ever seen. Tornados and dust devils and stones the size of houses, pulled out of the ground and hurled like children's toys in the hands of a giant.”

He thought of his spellcasting yesterday, of the force he'd thrown into the healing spell he'd put into Tifa's mutated guts, and wondered if his mother would have been proud of him. What could she have taught him, if she'd raised him? Materia provided the spark, but the mage provided the fuel and the shape... what would she think of him, had she lived?

“ But against Lucrecia... it wasn't enough. She was so _fast._ She moved and there was just a blur where she was,. And the light, it played tricks for her, I saw a dozen images of her even though there was just one- like it wasn't hard enough to know what to hit, with her running up the walls. It was odd- you'd think a scientist would be a sorcerer. Hell, you'd think a Shinra executive and Head of the Science Department wouldn't be much of a fighter at all... but apparently the good doctor doesn't care to play by anybody else's rules. She was _strong,_ fast, and she had two swords in each hand- blades like the Wutai use. No idea where she kept them; they seemed to just kind of pop into being in her hands, but she was so fast she might have had a sheath I just wasn't seeing.”

“ She finally got in close to your mother... and that was it. She  _cut,_ she cut and she cut, and Ifalna's magic couldn't keep shielding her, not with Lucrecia on her, giving her no room to breathe or cast, just cutting and cutting. Ifalna was pushed back to her flowers- funny how the fight had ended up back where it started, they'd been moving around so much it seems impossible- but back there, to her flowers. Ifalna raised her left hand to cast again, and Lucrecia ducked under it and sliced the bangle right off her arm. Cut Ifalna's arm damn good, too, big spray of arterial blood all over Lucrecia's face, but it was the bangle I watched- saw it fall among the flowers. I don't think Lucrecia noticed. Ifalna stumbled back, no more magic, and... no. I shouldn't tell you.”

“ I have to know,” Sephiroth said. Elmyra swallowed.

“ No, you don't,” she said, “ but I've hidden too much from you to start with. If you ask, I'll tell you, but... isn't it enough to say she died? She died, and she died badly, and I can leave it at that. It's not pretty, son- Sephiroth. It's the other half of my nightmares. Ifalna talking and Lucrecia's face, and then... the death. _Deaths,_ I should say, that's... Sephiroth, I've had nightmares about it on and off all my life. Are you... are you sure?”

_No._

“ Yes,” he said, helpless to say anything else, he... he had to  _know_ .

Elmyra nodded, and steeled herself up to finish.

“ I'm sorry. I want to tell you she died clean, or quick... but Lucrecia... she just kept hitting her. She hit her, _cut_ her, with the swords at first but then with her fists, the swords vanished or got resheathed or whatever and Lucrecia just kept going with her bare hands. There was blood, so much fucking blood, blood spraying all over her face and clothes, she had red up to her elbows and all over the ground and she just. Kept. _Hitting her...”_

Elmyra shook her head, eyes distant, the memory like a weight in her heart.

“ There was so much blood, and then, other... pieces... sent flying by the impact, or maybe she was tugging on them, she damn near pulled your mother inside out, and all I could do was watch. I started crying at some point, I don't remember when, I was so horrified I couldn't stop watching, couldn't turn my head. I cried and I sobbed, because who could  _do_ that to another person?”

Elmyra paused, then kept going, as Sephiroth's imagination tried to picture the scene, and recoiled... and the Planet sent him a feeling of  _sympathy_ , for him, who it had never liked, a sense of shared sorrow. He clung to it like a lifeline as Elmyra continued.

“ When your mother was finally lying there twitching, dying, in shreds, in more pieces than you'd think a person could be in and still be even a little bit alive... I saw Lucrecia pause, take a breath, and pull a round bottle from some pocket on her belt. She poured that bottle onto your mother, dumped it there, something red and heady like blood. Didn't know what it was at the time, but your little thief friend, Kyrie... she brought you a bottle of it.”

“ Elixir?” Sephiroth said, voice shaking. Elmyra nodded, and swallowed thickly.

“ She poured an elixir all over your dying mother, and when she healed, she started hitting her  _again_ . She used a bottle of elixir to save her life just to kill her  _again_ . She killed her twice, your mother suffered two deaths and the second time was slower. Lucrecia... started with her legs... went up... beating her to death. Your mother died screaming and in pain, Sephiroth. I wanted to run, I wanted to puke, but I couldn't move, I was too horrified. I don't know how Lucrecia didn't hear me sobbing. Maybe too enraged, too focused, too busy hurting her... or maybe she just couldn't hear me over Ifalna's screaming.”

A sob left Elmyra, and she took up a napkin, and in all the time it took her to cry and blow her nose and miss the trashcan again, Sephiroth said nothing, could do nothing but sit there, stunned and horrified.

( A thought passed through his mind; _she was right, I should not have asked._ )

His mother, recovered, began again.

“ I finally found my feet when the last of her suffering stopped echoing off the trains. I wanted to run, but I was too scared to move, afraid that angry woman would see me; afraid she'd hear my heart, trying to leap out of my chest. She stood there over your mother's broken corpse, breathing hard, soaked head to toe in the gore of that good woman... it was the arrival of others that gave me a chance to leave. A tall man with long black hair appeared, in a big red overcoat- Vincent Valentine. He was limping, limping bad, but he had eyes only for Lucrecia, didn't even grunt as he hobbled forward, coming from the train station.”

“ She turned away from your mother's body, and she started _crying,_ I don't know what that was about. She cried and the tall man hugged her, and she hugged him back, like she wasn't standing there splashed with blood, he put his hand on her and they looked like any young couple comforting one another. A helicopter started to arrive, and I finally found my courage and slipped off. I guess her husband had called a ride home for her.”

She trembled, and sighed.

“ And that's... almost all of it. Almost. Sephiroth, we hid your presence for three years. Three years, terrified that even our purchases would reveal us; Abe bought diapers in Sector Three and I walked all the way to Wall Market to get formula for you, fighting monsters the whole way, nearly getting killed just to make sure no one knew you were there in our house... it was hard going, but you were our little boy, and you'd already been through so much. Made it easier. You grew up big and tall and smart, too, and that made it easier, too. Let us lie about your age.”

“ Lie?...” he said, and his mind remembered the math he'd been pondering before her story had wiped it from his mind entirely.  _12 minus 1988- well, 2012, really, the Shinra calendar is a wash..._

“ Yes,” she said. “ We had the Leaf House fake up adoption papers in case someone came by to ask, they were so desperate for money they didn't question a thing, and we lied like dogs. You were big enough that the lie was believable, and you were always a serious and smart kid- mature for your age, making you about average for the age we lied about. Three years, stretching that lie out as far as we could- two would have been safer, but I pushed for three. Just on the edge of believable, and only because you grew up big and smart... but it worked. Even you believed it. Why not? Not many people remember their earliest childhood, anyway. We told you a number three years older than you were and you just accepted it.”

“ So I'm... twenty-four.”

She nodded. “ Yes. You're not twenty-seven, you're twenty-four, but not a single piece of paper on the Planet says that. We made sure.”

It was odd; the knowledge of his true age... didn't even feel important, after everything. Trivial. He shrugged, and she continued.

She sighed. “ We kept your name- stupid- but... I couldn't... after seeing the way she died, I had to give you the name she gave you. Some piece of her had to stay. Weird name, but some people on the Western Continent use it, so we could always just pretend we'd heard it from an immigrant. Besides, people knew we were looking at adoption, so when we showed up with a little boy suddenly, no one wondered where you came from, or wondered when the hell I'd been pregnant. I'd call it good luck, but... I don't think it was.”

She looked him in the eye, and he realized, suddenly, that she had  _not_ looked him in the eye, not throughout all her story, had been avoiding looking at his face.

“ Your mother knew our names, Sephiroth; I think she was looking for us. I don't know how or why, but then... that voice of the world inside us... it wasn't words, not for us, but maybe it was for her. Maybe the Planet told her. Chose us, because we wanted a kid, and... well, I guess... I guess I haven't failed her  _all_ the way. You've grown into a good man.  _I'm_ proud of you, if nothing else.”

He gave her a small smile, all he could muster, after everything she'd just said... but she saw it, and she smiled a little, too.

“ One more thing, and... okay, this part's gonna be hard to believe... but I think your mother's still here. The Ghost Lady of the Train Graveyard... you've heard of her, right?”

His mind snapped to the dream- she'd been sitting in flowers amid trains, he  _knew_ of the Ghost Lady, everybody did, urban legend and myth in every mouth. But he'd been so caught up in  _mother_ that he hadn't thought of it...

“ I... she?...” he managed to choke out.

Elmyra nodded.

“ Yes,” Elmyra said. “ I just  _know_ it's her. She's wearing odd clothes and a better body, according to the talk; big poofy dress and all plump and motherly, according to the talk. But I guess if  _I_ was a ghost, I wouldn't want my ass hanging out of a hospital gown for all eternity either; and given the shape her body was in at the end, I'd make a new body, too. She's still missing that eye, though... well, I guess she'd have to be, wouldn't she? It ain't dead, it's rolling around wet and seeing in Lucrecia's right socket. It's still alive, it can't be a ghost with her.”

That thought was entirely logical, but so absurdly grotesque that Sephiroth put it out of his mind entirely, and refused to think on it.

“ The description fits, though. And I've... asked around. Lot of people make up stupid stories about her killing folks, because people hear  _ghost_ and try to make them scary... but no one who's actually seen her reports anything but kindness. She's rare, but she's there, often enough for some consistency in the stories. Little kids that get led back out; people catching glimpses of a spectral woman, playing with the lost souls of little children. They say there's little chalk marks everywhere that no one draws, remnants of kid's games... guess she still feels motherly.”

“ I believe those stories, not the others. Hell, the fact people can get through the Train Graveyard at all now says they're the ones that are right; I remember when the Train Graveyard was almost literally impassable. But now, people can cross it, it's safe; monsters don't go there anymore.”

She sighed.

“ There's... one more thing. Multiple people have said this, including Gwen, who was there a month ago... there's flowers there. Yours, specifically. Or at least, purple-black blooms... but I don't know of any other flower like that here, not one that'd grow in Midgar. They say they infest the entire area now. And a few people told me they see the Ghost Lady planting the flowers sometimes...”

He felt- he felt too much, at that thought, the idea was too much to think about. His mother's ghost was tending his flowers... he wasn't sure _what_ he felt at that thought, something sweet and bitter and melancholy and elegaic, too much, all he knew was that it was too much.

“ Enough,” he said, “ please.”

She nodded.

“ I didn't know how to handle that, either.”

They were silent for a few moments.

“ Have you ever... went?” he asked, and she hacked a cackling laugh.

“ No,” she confessed. “ I'm not a hypocrite, but I  _am_ a coward. I... I've never had the guts. I've debated it. Thought of going there, to tell her how you're doing; or even bringing you, when I was working up the nerve to tell you all this, show you to her. That brave woman  _died_ to make sure you escaped, and I don't have the courage to face her, to tell her I kept this from you long past the point you should have known. She'd slap my face off, and I'd deserve it.”

She sighed.

“ So... that's it. That's why the Turks are after you. Lucrecia's found you again, and she won't stop, not until you're stuck in a lab again, with all those needles and wires in you... Shinra's after you.”

The most powerful force in the world, and one of the Heads that made up its mind was after him, personally.

He probably shouldn't feel so...  _excited._

“ Then I guess it's time to kill her,” he said, and his mother laughed.

“ It's foolishness,” she said. “ But take it from a coward- better a fool than a craven. That's why I didn't tell you. I knew you'd... you'd have to do something. And you've been so supportive of AVALANCHE... I know you've kept it quiet, but I know you. You've healed more than your share of rebels.”

He nodded. It was the truth. So many had come to him, by accident or request. Kyrie, who thought she had kept the fact she was working for AVALANCHE a secret from him; a dark-skinned, bald-headed man of serious demeanor three years ago, who'd been passing through on a delivery run of some importance. Tifa, now, her green slitted eyes blazing, having fallen from the Plate into his church. The whole kaleidoscope of people who opposed Shinra, who hated them, the resistance against the world's false God... whom he was going to join.

He really should  _not_ feel as good about this as he did. Even with the horror of his mother's last moments on his mind, he couldn't shake this... excitement.

It was time, finally time, to strike back, to do the thing the Planet had been pushing him to do all this time.

“ It's time, then,” his mother agreed with his inward thoughts, voice quiet and burned out. “ Time for you to join them... and blowing up the Reactors is an ugly fucking thing, but Shinra owns the world now. Maybe only something so terrible and drastic can work at this point, maybe something so awful and devastating is the only thing left that can work. And regardless, it's time for you to avenge your mother, or... or die trying...”

Her breath hitched, and Sephiroth, having heard everything, realized he had a right to condemn this woman for keeping this from him.. or to forgive.

( Memories, flashing through his mind; Elmyra cooking, teaching him how to farm, of materia and magic. Taking interest in his lessons, teaching him what she knew, helping him to learn when he had outgrown it; blankets in his room, sewn for her cold-intolerant son. Warm hugs and warm laughter and a warm house, all because, once upon a time, a woman on a bench had chosen to take care of a child thrust upon her by circumstance.)

It was a simple decision.

He walked over and hugged her. She was so small these days, he could feel the weight of time on her; his poor mother.

“ Stop,” she said, “ I don't... I'm sorry, I should have told you all this before...”

“ It's okay,” he said. “ It's okay, Mother.”

“ You still want to call me that?” she asked, and he chuckled.

“ You are my mother,” he confirmed. “ And I am your son.”

She hugged him back.

They both needed napkins after that; she finally managed to toss one in the trash, and he made her the double-strength coffee she preferred. With a new cup before her, he sat down, putting the book- his  _father's_ book- down on the table.

“ What's your plan?” she asked, taking a swig of her coffee. “ You can't stay here- the Turks'll be on this house soon.”

“ Then you can't stay either,” he said. “ They'll torture you- they're Turks, that's what they do. You'll come with us- Tifa is trying to get back to her AVALANCHE cell. I'll go with her, and we'll find you somewhere safe.”

“ But the house...”

“ I'll call in favors,” Sephiroth said. “ I've helped them; now they can help me. I'll get others to watch the place, take care of the garden... the Leaf House kids do half the work these days anyway, they can take over. It'll be here when we get back.”

“ Get back?” Elmyra asked, and she managed a hacking laugh. “  _Get back._ As if you're going out on a grocery run, not plotting to take down the world's government. Like it's just something on your to-do list.”

_My to-do list?_ He thought, and then he imagined it, that great list, and without knocking first, King Laughter entered into his soul; he laughed, he laughed the helpless laughter of the tense and nervous, draining weakness out of him with each guffaw.

He rose up, still chuckling.

“ Maybe it is,” he said. She grinned.

“ And here I thought you were like Abe; that sounds like something I'd have said, in my youth.”

“ Just one last thing,” he said. “ We'll have to prepare, and leave quickly- the Turks'll be here soon. But... I suppose we should talk about my name.”

“ True,” she said. “ Sephiroth Faremis... that's your real name.”

It sounded good in his head, as he rolled it around... but while it  _could_ be his name, he didn't quite like the fit of it. No, he had a... better idea.

“ Not all of it,” he said. “ You never gave me a middle name.”

“ Wouldn't have felt right,” she said. “ You were my boy, so Gainsborough was okay, but your mama only named you Sephiroth. Didn't give us a middle name.”

“ Then I'll take Faremis for it,” he said. “ Sephiroth Faremis Gainsborough. For both my families- the one I never got to know, and the one that raised me.”

Elmyra smiled at him.

“ That's my boy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hasten to point out two facts:
> 
> 1.) Elmyra is not lying about anything.
> 
> 2.) Elmyra doesn't know everything; this is just what SHE, personally, is aware of.
> 
> Keep that in mind, folks.


	23. A Spoonful of Stone Soup

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good Lord, I rewrote this chapter four times.
> 
> Sorry for the delay- but here it is! Involving Sephiroth, a town that loves him, and an incident in the junkyard that is surely NOT foreshadowing anything at all!

**Chapter 21**

**A Spoonful of Stone Soup**

This garden was so... peaceful.

It reminded Tifa of home, which was weird; it wasn't much like home. Nibelheim was staggering vistas and crisp mountain views; the sight of sheep and goats on long green slopes, the smell of mountain wildflowers, the sound of hunting dragons carrying from distant valleys. This place was nothing so grand; just a small bubble of life in the sterile death Shinra had created, a little oasis of green- and not even really all that wild. It was a farm, after all, and thus by definition cultivated and tamed.

But with all that said... it still reminded her of home. Perhaps because she felt at peace, here, as she had before the war.

Yes... this was a good place. Peace sat strangely on her- five years of the War had leaned the compass of her heart towards violence, perhaps _too_ far, if her actions towards Sector 7's weaponsmith was any indication- but it wasn't a bad thing.

It didn't hurt that she felt so _good_. Sephiroth was quite an accomplished healer; now that she had a moment to rest and think it over, she realized she felt... fresh. Crisp. Almost new.

Reborn, in some way, and wasn't that appropriate? She  _had_ landed in a church.

A smirk crossed her face at the thought before she faded back to her usual stoic neutrality. Perhaps she should start calling Sephiroth Champion too- though, no, that seemed to bother him. She wouldn't want to be rude.

_Not like it'll matter,_ New Tifa said.  _We'll be gone soon enough._

_True,_ she agreed. 

She took in another breath, just enjoying the sight and sound of birds and bugs and life, the world continuing around her as she waited. A fat, or possibly pregnant, cat wandered out of a patch of tomatoes, looked at her and Gwen very judgmentally for a few seconds, then slipped away into a patch of cucumber vines. A snake napped on nearby rocks, dark scales sucking in the bright light for warmth; a good old black snake, non-venomous, the kind that ate other snakes. They'd left those alone back home, too, on the farms; they'd drive out or eat the venomous serpents, and then they'd catch vermin like mice and rats. Almost better than a cat, except you couldn't pet them.

( Tifa had tried. The snakes had always slithered off swiftly, terrified of the little girl determined to befriend them. Her dad had yelled at her good for bothering the snakes.)

With that thought in mind, Tifa looked the gardens over with a critical eye. Her childhood as a cowgirl was many years and many corpses behind her, but those long-atrophied senses were still  _there_ , and she recalled enough to give a fair judge of this farm. Her family had been solidly middle-class, after all, and in Nibelheim that meant they were land owners; several families had worked the Lockhart fields, taking a portion of the crop in return for their labor. They'd worked the land, too; it had been a point of pride with their family since before her great-grandmother's time that Lockharts worked their own fields, didn't grow fat and lazy like other families did off the labor of others. They'd been one of the few land-owning families to join the harvest dances in spring and autumn alongside the farmhands; she remembered how excited she'd been when her period first came in and she could go to the dances. Autumn that first year, since she'd missed spring, then spring and autumn for the next two years.

She'd have seen more, but Cloud had confided in her his plan in the dead of winter, and the duo had taken off right after the first spring thaw, afraid the village would chase them down and return them if they went at any less perilous time. Somehow, despite the dangers of avalanches and dragons awakening from hibernation, they had made it out of the mountains, not to return for many years.

( Heh. Dangers of avalanches indeed... dangers like falling off of the Plate.)

She still recalled those lovely dances, the spins and whirls, the vivid colors; blacks and greens in spring's dances for the harvest-to-come, one for good fertile earth and one for hoped-for plants, then the reds and golds of autumn's dances for the harvest-that-was, mimicking the way the Planet's own trees put on their best dresses before winter.

She wondered if the people of Midgar did harvest dances... well, if they  _had_ done them, before Midgar, before the Wasteland, before everything.

Another few minutes of peace passed, and then a stray thought occurred to Tifa. She  _did_ feel good, but more, she felt clearer. Crisper, somehow, like her head had been hurting for so long she hadn't even noticed it, but now it was healed. She felt more aware than she had in a long while.

In fact, now that she was thinking about it, hadn't her head been hurting since she got to Midgar? Ever since she woke up on that bench in Sector 7, there'd been a sort of... writhing throb in the back of her mind, a dull ache that had become background noise; she'd never noticed it. Not until now.

A pulse of pain in her head. Ugh. Great. She'd thought about it, and now it was back... but no, no, it was fading again.

(  _I don't have the power anymore lost too much healing her but I had to heal her but she's going to remember and she's never going to forgive me_ )

...What... that was... Tifa blinked. She could have  _sworn_ she'd heard something right then, a voice... 

She waved it off. It was head trauma. Probably an old war wound. SOLDIERs didn't get sick with normal human diseases, and the free abuse of healing materia meant they  _usually_ didn't get scars... but every now and then, things stayed.

Aeris had complained, sometimes, that her stomach hurt, from where Elfe had stabbed her.

( Stabbed her twice, actually; once when she'd beaten her at Corel, and once more, when Aeris beat  _her._ She had deliberately let Elfe stab her in the stomach so she could grab her, fighting through the pain to plant a hand on Elfe herself and turn her blood to frozen slurry in her veins, something even nearly-invincible Elfe could not survive. It would have been a great triumph... but that it came a week before Zack's death, and everything that followed.)

It must be something like that, though she wondered what, precisely, had done it... looking over her memories, she remembered getting hit in the head a _lot_ , wow, she should really learn to duck. Who knew what it was?

As long as it didn't come back, she wasn't too worried about it. Fighting Shinra would probably get her killed before an old wound could.

For now, she'd just enjoy the peace and quiet.

Life carried on, as it tended to do. That fat cat came back, peeking out of the cucumber vines; clearly wanting something, but too nervous and scared of humans to go get it. On a whim, Tifa gently knelt down; it almost ran, but didn't, and instead sniffed at her.

( _Not just human,_ the cat's nose told her. _Smells a little like man-with-flowers, smells a little like something else, ancient-earth-thing; smells human, too, but not just human._ )

It apparently was okay with whatever its nose reported back; it slinked out, and gently let Tifa pet it. It had rough skin under its fur, old scabs that had never quite finished healing and a burned spot on her fur, where it seemed someone had put a cigarette out on the poor beast at some point in time. Grit in her fur made it rough as sandpaper, and one eye was milky and blind from some old wound.

And despite it all, the little cat was still there.

_Like me,_ Tifa thought. _You're a veteran too, aren't you, kitty_?

It rubbed its head hard against her palm a few times before deciding it had enough, swiftly returning to the safety of the vegetable patches... well, it tried to be swift. It mostly waddled rapidly.

“ Fond of cats?” a voice came from nearby. Tifa started; she'd almost forgotten Gwen was there.

“ Yes,” she told the watch captain, and almost despite herself, the next few words were dragged out of her mouth. “ I had a cat as a kid.”

“ I have a dog,” Gwen said. “ Named him Bugly because he's butt-ugly. He's a mixed breed but none of it mixed well.”

Tifa suppressed a smirk. That was a pretty funny name. Once more, semi-unwillingly, she said, “ My cat was named Mr. Punch.”

Gwen chuckled. “ I like that. Kinda fits with your whole martial artist thing.”

Zangan had liked it too, and for the same reason- though he pointed out that since cats had four legs and no arms, technically it should have been Mr. Kick. Tifa had always been fond of cats, though Zack and Aeris had preferred dogs, which was kind of funny given Angeal's nickname for Zack. Once they got together, the two had even gotten one, a big Western mountain breed that Zack, in a fit of genius, had named Good Boy.

( He'd left the dog behind when he went into the West. Aeris had kept him... Tifa wondered what had happened to him, after Nibelheim.)

“ I suppose,” Tifa answered neutrally, feeling like a jerk... but she... she couldn't afford to be _too_ sociable.

_They'll betray you, everybody betrays you, Zack and Aeris and Shinra_ , New Tifa said.

_And you, yourself, betray them in turn,_ Old Tifa said, finishing the thought.

Yes, that was all true. Ever more reason to withdraw.

Things were silent a few moments longer before Gwen finally spoke again.

“ Sorry,” the town watchwoman said. “ I get you like your silence, but... I'm not big on peaceful silences. Reminds me too much of guard duty during the War.”

She was in the war?

Tifa almost opened her mouth, but stopped herself at the very last second. It wasn't safe. It wasn't... she  _couldn't._ No matter how much she didn't want to do this, how much she  _wanted_ to get involved in the lives of others, she... she couldn't. A cold mercenary did not get involved in stranger's lives... and... no matter what she wanted, she had to be cold, she had to be uncaring, she had to be  _safe._

If she never let anyone in, no one could betray her.

She refocused herself on this peaceful place, and the silence carried for a little while before Gwen felt compelled to break it again.

“ Okay, fuck it, I've never beat around the bush my entire life,” the Corelian woman finally said. “ I gotta ask. How the fuck are you not dead? And I'm not talking about falling off the Plate. You're  _Tifa Lockhart,_ where the hell have you been for five years? You died with Aerith, didn't that Genesis guy get both of you?”

Tifa gave her a look. It turned out where sympathy and desire could not penetrate the icy shell,  _indignation_ could.

“ Genesis? I can't believe they spread  _that_ story,” Tifa scoffed. “ Genesis was the worst fighter in 1 st Class.”

“ Still means he was one of the world's finest warriors,” Gwen pointed out.

Tifa snorted.

“ As he would be the first to remind you,” she said, before her voice turned fond. “ He was... he was actually a pretty decent guy, despite himself, but he wasn't a great fighter. He was always challenging Aeris, trying to beat her; they fought more than  _anybody_ , I should know, we kept tallies. They fought so much, and he never  _once_ beat her. He only ever beat  _me_ once, and I wasn't as good as Aeris!”

( Except the once, at Nibelheim  _the fire and the ice and the mistake_ )

“ What was he like?” Gwen asked, and now that the dam was burst, Tifa couldn't stop herself, no matter how much she wanted to retreat. Still too much like her old self, she supposed.

_Dammit_ , came New Tifa's despairing cry from the back of her mind.

“ Dramatic, silly, obsessed with old poetry... and loyal,” she said. “ For all his drama, if you were his friend, he'd go to the world's end for you. It's why we all tolerated him. He was our weird kid brother, you know? Which was funny, because he was the oldest of us... but  _definitely_ the least mature. Great musician, though.”

“ Really?” Gwen asked, quirking an eyebrow.

“ We didn't exactly have the most time to pursue hobbies,” Tifa said, “ but we had time for one or two. I trained other SOLDIERs, Zack and Aeris went on dates, Angeal read treatises on philosophy and government... and Genesis played guitar and sang. He was really good- better than me and Aeris, anyway. We wrote a song for piano and voice once, but it was... really amateurish.”

Still a fond memory, despite everything, the two of them dicking around on that grand piano Shinra had put on the relaxation floors, Scarlet sitting by amused by their shoddy songwriting and sometimes tossing in unwanted tips.

“ That's weird to think about,” Gwen said. “ I wasn't in any of the fanclubs or propaganda, even back then I knew better than to trust fucking Shinra- but you two writing music... well, I can kinda see it with you, but definitely not Aerith. She was like, untouchable. Above the rest of us.”

Aeris had thought that, too, though she'd seen it as a great responsibility, one she struggled to live up to; Tifa had spent so much time trying to keep her feet on the ground, remind her she was just one person, no matter how talented. Zack had helped, before he'd... well.

“ She was a good person,” Tifa said after a moment. “ They tried to prop her up, and it hurt her, too. She was just a person, after all, and trying to live up to the Aeris they showed us... it didn't do her much good.”

“ I can see that,” Gwen said. “ She bore the weight of the War on her shoulders, didn't she?”

Tifa nodded. “ She did.”

“ Poor woman,” Gwen said.

The watchwoman was silent after that, and memories filtered through Tifa, though not without a return of that dull ache in her head; thankfully, it lasted only for a few very brief moments before it relented, the memories coming in unobstructed afterwards.

Aeris  _had_ borne the whole War on her shoulders, she'd taken responsibility for  _everything_ ... including the ugly parts, the parts Tifa had, even then, not been able to reconcile with her self-image. They'd fought about that, later, until Aeris had told her the truth- that these awful things would be done whether they willed them or no, and Aeris could not bear the thought of Zack or Tifa having to be involved. 

_Better it be me,_ she'd said.  _I'll fix it, I'll make up for it later... but you two... please, let me take these sins on, for the both of you. You don't deserve to bear this burden. I can take it. I'm strong._

Tifa had relented after that.

But even before the Turks, before Nanaki and secret missions and all that blood on Aerith's praying hands, Aeris had felt responsible for... for everything, somehow. She cried, some nights, hiding away from Zack out of an irrational fear that he'd dump her for being weak if he found out- which would have been unbelievable coming from Zack, yet Aeris had somehow been convinced of it until Tifa talked sense into her. 

Aeris had apologized, later. For crying, for feeling sad... almost for being just a person, at day's end.

Poor Aeris, so powerful, who still needed to be told she was only human.

_And after all your kindnesses, she betrayed you,_ New Tifa snarled.

_Betrayal is a very human act,_ Old Tifa responded. 

Gwen, silence's perpetual assassin, struck again.

“ So... you know her name was Aerith, right? Not Aeris,” Gwen said. “ You keep pronouncing it wrong.”

“ I'm from the West,” Tifa said. She'd had some variation of this conversation dozens of times over the years. “ When we first met I couldn't pronounce the -th; we don't have any words that end that way. Kept calling her Aeris. She thought it was cute, let me keep it as a nickname.”

That had annoyed the _hell_ out of Lucrecia.

“ That's... that's adorable,” Gwen said, before silence resurrected once more.

Aeris... her friend. Six good years, ending in Nibelheim and fire and death.

...But she _was_ dead, wasn't she? Maybe... maybe she should let it go. The War had screwed them all up. Maybe the War had just screwed Aeris up too- no, scratch that, Tifa _knew_ the War had messed her up.

Maybe she should just... let go. Not forgive, and never forget... but remember Aeris as she had been, not as she was.

As she thought this, the silence was once more killed, but the murderer wasn't Gwen this time. No, it was the Gainsborough house's door, creaking open to reveal Sephiroth and his mother.

The duo approached, Sephiroth tall and intimidating in his black clothes, his mother wearing a little green dress. Sephiroth seemed... chipper, Tifa thoguht, though his face didn't really give her a reason to think that, and his mother wore a sad but smiling expression, eyes just a little red, as though she'd been crying.

“ Well, you ain't dead, that's good,” the woman said as she reached them, her voice a little hoarse, as though she'd been talking a long time. “ Figured we'd come out to you two dead and Turks all over the carrot patch.”

Tifa felt a little offended by that. She hadn't survived the entire War to be killed by fucking  _Turks_ .

“ Eh, they'd go for the tomatoes, your carrot patch looks kind of thin,” Gwen opined. “ Or the cucumbers, they're doing well. Potatoes are in dire straits, I'm afraid. Also, I didn't know you guys had a cat.”

“ We don't,” Sephiroth said with a sigh.

“ I mean, kind of,” Elmyra said at the same time with a cheeky grin. “ I left some food out for her over the last couple of days; I guess she's kind of my cat. I wanna name her Hissy.”

“ I've been trying to catch her,” Sephiroth continued. “ She's about to give birth; I planned to put her somewhere comfortable and safe for the labor, then spay her and distribute the kittens, and give her to mother as a pet. I guess I'll have to put that on hold.”

“ True,” Elmyra said.

“ At any rate, Tifa, Gwen, thank you for waiting and keeping watch.”

Tifa shrugged, their arrival kicking her back towards her colder facade.

“ No trouble,” she said.

“ Same here,” Gwen said.

“ Gwen,” Sephiroth said- well, intoned, in a deeply serious way. “ I must ask for a favor.”

“ Sure,” she said.

“ Me and my mother will be leaving- can you keep watch over her for a little while longer, while she packs?” he asked her.

“ Of course,” she said, sighing. “ I knew when a woman fell out of the damn sky that things were gonna change around here; be safe, you hear me? Sector 5 can do without its Champion, but you've got to come home, Sephiroth.”

He nodded. “ I will.”

“ You're leaving?” Tifa asked. Sephiroth nodded.

“ The Turks will kill her or me, or both,” he said. “ I wish to join you, Tifa. You and your... organization.”

...Ah. Well. That threw a bit of a monkey wrench in her plans, didn't it?

“ I can't guarantee you a place,” she said.

_I'm also technically not really part of AVALANCHE, I'm just a hired gun... a well-paid hired gun, but just a merc at day's end._

( Shame she had stored that money back at her apartment before her last mission, and didn't have it on her, but hindsight was 20/20 and all that.)

“ I know,” he replied. “ But if you could simply help me get my foot in the door, that is all I would need.”

_You can't trust-_

_Oh, shut up. He saved my life, healed me after falling off the fucking Plate. Hes'_ _ fine _ _ , _ Tifa snapped at the New voice in her head.

“ I'll take you- and your mother, I presume?” she asked.

He nodded.

“ If you would- obviously she will not be joining us, but she must be taken somewhere safe.”

“ What, you don't think your momma would be a great anarchist?” she quipped. “ They'd never see it coming, I guarantee that.”

“ I'm supportive of her new career choice,” Gwen said. “ The Granny Bomber.  _ I  _ wouldn't see it coming, that's for sure.”

Sephiroth sighed, and Tifa's mouth twitched as it tried to smile.

“ Before we leave, I have one last set of rounds to make,” Sephiroth told her. “ I'll need to go back into Sector 5 to make some requests, drop off medicines and write some prescriptions for people.”

Prescriptions?

“ There's a pharmacist in town?” Tifa said, and couldn't quite keep the disbelieving tone out of her voice. Sephiroth smirked.

“ Apologies. I call them prescriptions, but they are effectively just directions for taking the medicine I'm leaving with them; we're slummers, we don't have anything so nice as a pharmacy. But I  _ do  _ have medicine. Thankfully, this has good timing- there's not much going on right now, no patients who will die if I leave. So we can go as soon as that's done. If you would accompany me in case of Turk attack as a bodyguard, I would be most appreciative.”

_ No harm- save the life of the man who saved me,  _ _ and _ _ maybe punch Turks? An embarrassment of riches. _

“ Of course,” she said.

“ Excellent. I will retrieve my scythe and bag, and we will be off.”

He turned to his mother and the two set off, Gwen stepping forward to come with them.

“ You got a brown blanket or something? I can take up residence on your second-story balcony, shoot anybody coming in through the main entrance.”

“ Why do you need a blanket?” Elmyra asked.

“ Breaks up my outline, hides me with its color,” Gwen said. Tifa nodded behind her- camouflage, friend of wildlife and soldiers both.

A few moments later, Sephiroth returned with his bag and scythe.

“ Ah, Tifa, before we begin,” he said. “ I found some information out about your latest raid- and let me say, that as loathe as I am to leave this land, I am  _ excited  _ by the prospect of joining AVALANCHE.  _ Someone  _ has to bring down Shinra, even if the harm done in the first Reactor bombing was so horrific...”

A memory- Reno, the horror in his eyes, that midnight mission to clear his name, the relief when he found that all the deaths that night were not his fault.

“  That wasn't our fault,” Tifa said. “ Our bomb would only wreck the Reactor- but Shinra found out and let loose a bomb of their own. We found information about it later. They killed those people.”

_“We” found information? “Our” bomb?_ New Tifa said, scared. _You're getting too close..._

_Shut up!_

“ Truly?” Sephiroth asked. When she nodded in response, he put a hand to his chin. “ How did they know which Reactor was going to be attacked?”

Tifa had wondered that herself.

“ I don't know,” she said.

“ That's worrying... but also reassuring, to know that AVALANCHE had not planned the devastation. It makes the events of the second Reactor's shutdown make more sense... oh, that's what I wanted to tell you. Were you aware that AVALANCHE managed to shut down the second Reactor?”

“ No,” Tifa said. “ I fell off the Plate halfway through- I wasn't aware that we'd succeeded.”

“ I meant to tell you when you woke up, but the Turks interrupted that,” Sephiroth said. “ Reactor's shut down, but no devastation this time, at least, none beyond what shutting down the Reactor caused.”

“ Shinra claimed credit for that, I imagine,” Tifa said.

“ Absolutely,” the flower boy replied. “ From what little I've heard of what Plate dwellers think- mostly from the few people of Sector 5 who work up top- they're convinced Shinra saved their lives; it doesn't help that they've redirected electricity from most of the slums towards Sector 5, so they only experienced a brief loss of power.”

Well, Shinra getting more popular wasn't great... but at least the Reactor was shut down.

_Remember, you don't care, you're just a mercenary, you don't care._

“ Thank you,” she said. “ It didn't occur to me to ask while we were escaping the Turks, but it's good to know.”

“ You're welcome,” he said politely. “ Now... let's go.”

As Gwen took up residence on the house's second-story balcony, concealed and with rifle ready, Tifa and Sephiroth left this little lost land of life, heading back to Sector 5. Sephiroth led, while Tifa trailed close behind, ever-ready.

( Blast saw her as the duo emerged, and cursed; great, of _course_ the fucking SOLDIER was sticking with the target. She should never have listened when Vincent said this should be a simple mission.)

Past the stone bent like hands folded in prayer, they emerged into a small sea of children, all looking towards Sephiroth, an older Midgardian woman and a young Corelian woman both trying and failing miserably to corral them into order.

“ Mr. Champion!” one called. The little guy had a wooden scythe on his back, obviously rough-carved from some hunk of wood. “ Are you okay? We saw you running past!”

“ I'm sorry, Mr. Gainsborough,” the young Corelian woman said. “ The kids saw you and they've... well... they were worried.”

“ It's alright, Ms. Folia,” he said with some amusement. “ It's a good sign- the kids are worried about their neighbor. But I am alright, children.”

“ Really?” said the little boy with a sickle, and gave him a distrusting squint. “ Are you sure?”

“ I am, Oates,” Sephiroth said.

“ Okay,” the little guy said, frowning. “ Don't lie, that's bad.”

“ Oates!” Ms. Folia said, before sighing. “ Well, I'm glad you're alright, Mr. Gainsborough. I have to admit, I got nervous myself when I saw you running past.”

“ It's alright,” Sephiroth said with a smile before kneeling down before the scythe-packing boy- and thus missing the blush on Ms. Folia's face his smile engendered. “ Oates, can I ask you for a favor?”

“ Sure!” the brave little boy said.

“ Could you go see if Kyrie has returned from Sector 7? Tell her to bring her wagon here. I'll have need of her soon- just tell her to wait for me.”

“ You got it!” Oates said, and took off at a run.

A Kyrie... he'd mentioned a Kyrie before, hadn't he? One of the people he'd found her with... be good to meet her, put a face to the name.

Sephiroth rose up, then nodded to the two women. “ Housemother, good afternoon.”

“ Good afternoon to you, Champion,” the woman said. “ Now that you've seen that Mr. Gainsborough is fine, won't you come along, children?”

“ Okay,” came the chorus from many little throats, heading off with her. The Corelian woman turned to go as well before Sephiroth cleared his throat.

“ Ms. Folia, if we could talk in private?”

“ Oh! Oh, uh, sure!” the woman said, blushing furiously. “ No problem, obviously!”

One of the last kids to leave gave Ms. Folia a big thumbs-up and a wink, which flustered her even more. They stepped to the side, Tifa keeping watch, having a creeping sense they were being watched...

( Shame they were near all these kids; even ignoring Vicks' own personal connection, Blast would never have hurt all these kids. Even a Turk had their own sense of right and wrong, and hurting kids curdled Blast's guts. Hell, she didn't even want to involve any of the slumfolk; they lived hard enough lives. She'd wait. Opportunity to snatch the guy would arise.)

“ Mr. Gainsborough?” the woman asked shyly as they were alone- well, alone save for Tifa, but she resolutely didn't look at them. This was Sephiroth's business, she was just the help.

“ Ms. Folia,” he said, “ me and my mother are leaving for a time. I must ask you, and the Leaf House, to watch over our land.”

“ I- you're going away?!?” the young woman asked, stumbling over her words. She glanced at Tifa. “ What- what's going on?”

“ Danger,” he said, simply. “ This is Tifa, my bodyguard; she saved my life once, but we must leave. You know how we Gainsboroughs are; I would not leave my home but under the direst circumstances. The Leaf House has been good to us, and you know we have always done our best to reciprocate. If I _must_ leave the house and the land to someone, then the Leaf House is the only group I would trust. Will you maintain it?”

The young woman bit her lip, then gathered her courage.

“ I... Mr. Gainsborough, _Sephiroth,_ I'll do it,” she said. He smiled gently at her.

“ If you will watch my family's land, and keep it maintained, you will have done more for me than I can say.”

She nodded. “ I'll keep it all in order for... when you come back.”

“ Thank you,” he said. “ I have always admired your fortitude, Julia; you are a good person, and I'm glad to know you.”

She swallowed at that. “ I'm glad I know you, too. Is there... do you need anything else?”

“ No,” he said.

“ Then I... I should go,” she said thickly, and then walked off swiftly, going inside the orphanage, whose main building bore the marks of recent repair.

_She's crushing on him,_ Tifa thought. _And now he's leaving... goodbyes aren't easy..._

Sephiroth watched her go a moment, and then, a bit more subdued, “ Our next destination is close.”

The first house he led her to had a child who was just now beginning to recover from an illness; Sephiroth went inside, and gave them his prescription, a written list of care instructions and usage directions for the bottle of medicine he left them.

And he was left with something in return; the child's father, hearing that Sephiroth would be “unavailable for a time” when he had to explain why he'd come so unexpectedly to their doorstep, had insisted on giving him something for the journey. Over the back-alley doctor's protests, the man gave him a fat pouch of jerky.

“ It's good,” the man said. “ A cousin steals meat for me from up on the Plate, and I use our family's old recipes from before Midgar to season it. It'll last ya.”

The next house had a young couple who were having trouble conceiving; Sephiroth gave them a tincture made of raspberries and blueberries, alongside a bottle of more scientifically-created pills and another prescription. They, too, insisted on giving him a gift, a jacket the husband had won in a gambling contest at Wall Market; it was too big for the man who had won it, but it was just right for Sephiroth's larger frame.

Every house repeated the story. Here a young woman suffering from joint pain years too early, who in return for ointments to soothe her pain gave him a fistful of gil; there an older man whose sight was beginning to fade, who had gifted Sephiroth a prstine canteen in exchange for a set of glasses. A backpack in return for bandaging a wound; a travel set for a splint.

Soon people started coming to him, instead of the other way around, as word spread that he was leaving; a woman who brought him boots, a young couple who brought an additional canteen, a gift of gil from an old man whom he had never helped personally, but whose granddaughter lived because Sephiroth had nursed her through a bout of pnuemonia two years ago.

_He's like Cloud,_ Tifa thought, as this parade of gifts reached him. _Beloved, by everyone here._

No Turks approached, though Tifa caught a single gleam once from a place it should not have been, as of light shining off of binoculars or a scope; it was gone when she looked again, but she stayed even closer to Sephiroth after that.

( Vicks had cursed quietly as he withdrew to a new location. Even _observing_ Sephiroth was difficult with his pet lioness in tow. He hoped Blast's mission to infiltrate his home and plant sleeping bomb traps was going better.)

A wagon passed them at one point; the driver, a cheerful woman in a _powerfully_ fancy hat, waved at them, but kept going towards Sephiroth's house.

“ That was Kyrie?” Tifa asked.

“ Yes,” Sephiroth said, finishing his own wave. “ My mother shouldn't walk as much as our travels will demand, and it will be easier to avoid using more conventional routes with a Chocobo. Not much in the Wastes wants to fight a fully-grown chocobo, so we can dip out there and then come back in.”

The Wastes, which Tifa had to have crossed at some point... a vague memory, of a... biker? Some guy on a motorcycle. She thought she'd grabbed his bike and beat him to death with it. Bandit, maybe?

...Why was she just remembering that now? Odd, you'd think she'd recall more of walking through the Wastes, they said it was one of the deadliest places in the world...

As she wondered what else she'd remember, rubbing absently at her head as a small pain began and then stopped, unable to continue, they visited the last few houses. Nothing much unusual at these places, save a Descendant preacher with pale white eyes, who seemed to dislike Sephiroth, but had stared at Tifa for a moment before returning to preaching at the top of her lungs to a large crowd.

( Blast, near the Leaf House, had seen Gwen despite the sniper's precautions, and had been debating various points of attack... until the wagon arrived, and with quick thinking, snuck a tracker onto it without anyone seeing.)

As they were finishing up their route, that kid with the wooden scythe came running up, terrified and breathless.

“ Champion!” he coughed out as he reached them, before stopping to suck in a deep lungful of air.

“ What's the matter, Oates?” Sephiroth asked, moving closer to the obviously distressed child.

“ Monsters!” the breathless kid managed to reply in-between breaths. “ Monsters- our little secret place- weird blue one!”

“ A King,” Sephiroth hissed.

“ King?” Tifa asked.

“ Means the kids are in danger,” Sephiroth said, and set off at a run.

She ran after him, Sephiroth explaining even as they moved swift through the town, people taking note of them and crowds parting so they could pass, questions shouted and ignored.

“ Hedgehog Pies aren't usually dangerous... unless they are led by a male,” Sephiroth said between breaths. “ Males are rare, but they're also big, blue, and almost absurdly vicious. The others will defend the new King to the death, and his very presence emboldens them to go for... bigger prey.”

“ Like kids,” Tifa said, and Sephiroth nodded grimly.

“ Like kids.”

_Isn't this convenient?_ Tifa thought. _Bet the Turks somehow set this up- or are faking it. I'll need to watch him... having him leap in to be a hero would be a great opportunity to jump him._

Swiftly they reached a small crevice in the metal wall of the town, Sephiroth sliding in sideways- Tifa followed after, hoping she wouldn't get stuck. One disadvantage of being big, broad, and muscular was that small spaces were _very_ small indeed. She damn near had to hold in her breath to pass the metal at some narrow spots, barely scraping by.

A swift development of claustrophobia narrowly avoided, Tifa escaped the crevice, finding herself in a little squared-off area, clearly constructed by little hands- a little secret place, just for children. Old crates stacked up to make forts, pillows and blankets thrown over harder things to make soft sitting areas, even a little lookout tower that even now held a very nervous kid, watching the junkyard with one half of a set of binoculars used like a spyglass.

There were a lot of kids here, among blocky rocks and little places built with junk and a lot of effort; a concrete wall encircled it, some remnant from when this area hadn't been accessible only through a small crack in a metal wall. There was a hole in that concrete, covered over hastily with what looked like an old screen door.

It wasn't bad, for something kids had made; Tifa found it kind of... cute.

_And now they're in danger..._

A sort of flickering rage, surprising her with its strength, flared to life in her heart, accompanied by that dull throb in her head that soon passed. Wow, she was... she was _angry,_ she was _enraged,_ her heart was blazing. Like wildfire, all through her, so _angry..._ these were just _kids_ , and something wanted to _hurt_ them...

( The War, the way she'd felt when the people she'd trained were under fire, was this where all her easy violence came from? This _anger_...)

Burning, Tifa almost missed Sephiroth kneeling to talk to one of the children.

“ Is everyone accounted for?” he asked. She shook her head.

“ We're missing P and P!” she said.

“ P and P?” Tifa managed to snarl out.

“ Siblings,” Sephiroth said. “ Both have names starting with P and they're always together, so everyone calls them P and P.”

“ We have to go get them,” Tifa growled.

“ I agree,” Sephiroth said. Turning back to the little girl, he asked, “ Any idea where they are?”

“ In the back, near the river,” she said. “ That's the last place I saw them. I don't know if the monsters are there or not though- but we've been hearing gurgling and weird noises, so we holed up here! I don't know why they didn't follow us!”

“ Stay here,” Sephiroth said firmly. “ Me and my bodyguard are going to go save them.”

“ Okay!” the little girl said, as two other kids pulled the screen door open. “ Through here!”

Another tight fit but Tifa didn't even notice, her rage rising and rising and rising without check. The air crackled around her, the materia in her gauntlet responding to the firestorm inside her.

“ Which way to the river?” she snapped. She hadn't meant to be so terse, but her head kept aching on and off, which wasn't improving her mood any.

( _No, no, a mistake, you'll make another mistake_ )

The junkyard, much like that around the church, was mammothine piles of cyclopean junk, concrete blocks tall as ten men and bulldozers and cranes, nearly blotting out the sky.

“ That way,” Sephiroth said, and they shot down that way, Sephiroth's long legs trying desperately to compete with Tifa's mutant muscle.

They weren't far before something spat a fireball at them.

From atop a pile of junk, a monster leered. Tifa's first glimpse of a Hedgehog Pie told her pretty much everything she needed to know about the rotten little beastie. It had a wide grin of very sharp teeth, smiling because it was _delighted_ to make your day just as shitty as it possibly could. This smile was matched by beady little eyes that said it was _just_ smart enough to be an asshole, and a great big pot-belly in which it desired to stuff the nearest small animal and/or child with those tiny, creepy arms.

In short, it was a perfectly horrible little monster, the kind of thing you could kill all day and not lose an ounce of sleep over. Tifa snorted and send a lightning bolt at it, one powered by her anger; the bolt blew it to charred chunks.

“ There'll be more,” Sephiroth said. “ We must be close- the King keeps his women near him.”

Tifa didn't respond, just started running again, ignoring the little monsters, save to hurl more lightning at any stupid enough to get directly in front of her. More fireballs- little sizzling lumps of almost magma-like globs, spat up by whatever strange and magical processes were acting on the insides of the pot-belled pukers. They weren't terribly good shots; Tifa dodged on reflex. Without proper armor, that would burn like hell...

Soon, they heard the sound of children screaming. Tifa tore ahead of Sephiroth, put on a great burst of speed, and came out onto an open area, a wide, dirt-brown space amidst the great mountains of debris. A roaring river, wide and deep, ran down the left of the open space, but it was no healthy stream like Sephiroth's garden; no, this river was thick and clogged with mud and filth, running brownish-red from the rust the rainwater collected. It looked less like water and more like blood, like an open wound in the side of the Planet.

And in the middle of that river were two children.

There was a little island formed by a pileup of junk in the river's middle, a shifting thing that moved even as the kids hobbled around it, using a sheet of upright metal as cover. Two kids, the little boy hiding behind his sister, were on that tiny island in the river's middle, a nearby crane's long arm explaining how they'd gotten over there. A Hedgehog Pie tried to climb down it to get to them, but she fell off and into the river, screaming as she sank; they couldn't swim, apparently. The King was visible, a big blue reptile-thing, and it spat globs of ice at the children, who shrieked and clung tighter to their poor protection as the monster got their range. A small harem giggled near it, and spat fireballs of their own.

Tifa, blazing with fury, fell on them like the warrior archangel Shinra had made her, voice raised in a wordless roar.

She leapt in, and on impact crushed the skull of one of the bodyguards. Two strong hands, grabbing and twisting, _hurting_ the King, hurting him, before she hurled him across the open space. Then her hands were hammers and she was hitting, hitting and _hitting,_ crushing and mangling the monsters, gore up to her elbows and it wasn't enough she had to _hurt_ them they had to _die._

She hit them once.

Twice.

Thrice.

Ten times.

Twenty.

Some time later- she wasn't quite sure how long- a particularly hard throb in her skull brought her back, out of whatever blind rage had taken her eyes and her mind.

( _Tifa!_ )

She blinked and looked around herself.

She stood amidst bloody _mush._ She had reduced the monsters to pulp, so little of them was left that could hardly be identified as anything at all... just bone fragments and blood splatter and the odd chunk of flesh, here and there. A twitching leg, a single claw, an eye that rolled off the shore and into the ruddy river nearby.

Tifa herself was covered in blood and gore. Ashes, too; she'd apparently been hurling lightning bolts that whole time, the air stank of ozone in addition to the piss and shit and iron-salt tang of blood. Several bodies were charred beyond recognition, were even now still burning.

...Had she done that? Her fire was still burning, but low now. This... Planet, even if they'd deserved it, she hadn't liked the loss of _control._ She'd just been so _angry..._ but that was strange, why so angry, it wasn't just because she was protecting kids, what _was_ this?

Sephiroth caught up at that point, breathing hard; she'd left him far behind, apparently.

“ Tifa!” he yelled, before slowing down as he took in the scene around her. “ I- Tifa- what-”

“ They were shooting at them,” Tifa said, and even as she said it winced; it sounded like she was trying to defend herself. But she didn't have to, they were going to hurt the kids, right? Even if she hadn't felt this angry in battle before, or at least, not since the War...

Wait.

The kids, _shit_.

She whipped her head around, cold fear dashing all her fire to ashes, she hadn't been paying attention at _all_ once that fury took her, the kids could have fallen in the fucking river for all she knew...

No, there they were, thank the Planet. Quiet, sniffling, hiding, but alive.

“ I'll- I'll get them,” she said, as Sephiroth walked over to her.

A gurgle behind her told her the King had, somehow, survived being thrown across the floor; he stood up groggily, and after shaking his head, let out a gurgling roar, answered by dozens of throats.

“ Get the kids,” Sephiroth said, putting his doctor's bag down and picking up his scythe. “ I'll deal with this.”

She didn't have time or inclination to argue; instead, she leapt, strong legs carrying her to the children's little island. It shifted as she landed, but held firm; apparently this pile of junk intended to stay.

The kids looked at her with terrified eyes, and shame flushed through her system.

“ Hey,” she said softly, kneeling down to their eye level, “ hey, it's okay.”

She reached out a hand, realizing belatedly that it was soaked with red up to the elbow; she treid to wipe it off, but had nothing to wipe with except her shirt, which was almost as red.

“ I... I'm here to help,” she said lamely, holding out a hand that shook from adrenaline. “ Please. I'm here to protect you.”

“ I... are you okay?” the little girl asked, and Tifa almost laughed. Leave it to a kid to hit the nail on the head.

“ No,” she said honestly, “ but I'm functional. Come on, I can get you out of here.”

The girl, clearly the older of the two bedraggled children, debated it a moment, before reaching her own hand out.

“ Okay,” the little girl said, and dragged herself and her brother into Tifa's arms.

One more big leap, with her precious cargo; and then they were on the shore. Before them, rushing across the open space, was a great horde, two dozen or so of the hedgehog pies, Sephiroth running to meet them away from the shore

“ Stay here,” she told them. “ I have to help him.”

“ No you don't,” said the little boy, who had pressed his face against Tifa's leg, apparently deciding she was okay despite her blood-soaked entrance into his life. “ He's the Champion.”

Whatever Tifa was going to say next was interrupted, because she caught a glimpse of Sephiroth starting his attack, and he was... dancing?

Her second, longer glance filled in the details. Not dancing, though it looked like it; he was spinning and whirling and keeping the monsters on their toes, never pausing or stopping. His scythe was as busy as his feet, using his momentum to lash out and take heads off at a blow; Sephiroth was a _damn_ strong man, to cleave through their ranks like he was doing. His weapon was a lot more durable than she'd have thought it to be, if it was standing up to the absolutely brutal use he was putting it too; it couldn't be easy to go through scales and bone and flesh like that.

He weaved in and out of their ranks, the monsters trying to keep up and miserably failing as he kept going; a pause to lunge forward and strike unexpectedly here, before coiling back and leaping away. Almost the way Angeal had taught her to fight a horde, though much lower-powered to compensate for Sephiroth not being a SOLDIER... but similar.

_He'd be a hell of a SOLDIER_ , Tifa thought idly, as she watched him chewing through the ranks of the horde. _He might even be 1_ _st_ _Class material._

...Harvest dance, that was why she thought he was dancing at first, this looked like a harvest dance. It didn't help he was wearing black, like Nibelheim did for spring, though given his scythe, he should have been wearing reds and golds for the reaping. She hadn't expected this- given his grim aspect and the easterner's death figure, which he resembled so much with his black clothes and sickle, she assumed he'd fight the same way, tall and intimidating, not this whirlwind of blood and violence.

A hand squeezing hers distracted her; the little girl. The little boy, too, who had pressed his face tight against Tifa's leg,scared, and she put a gory hand down to comfort him (after making another futile attempt to wipe it off on her shirt.) Poor little guy.

Soon enough, Sephiroth was done. The horde was trimmed down to a few survivors, who in terror reverted to more primitive instincts and fled the battle rather than fight.

The King, who had ineffectually been trying to hit Sephiroth with his spat globs of ice while he killed the beast's minions, tried to run, too, but he didn't get far. Even as it tried to hop away, Sephiroth pointed his sickle at the beast. A slurry of green venom poured out of the end and suffused the beast entirely, the mixture of multiple serpentine venoms so concentrated it was practically liquid death. Forced to mainline the substance, the King died as every organ it had suffered simultaneous shutdown.

_Poison for a King,_ Tifa thought distractedly. _How fitting._

Also common for doctors to have, though Tifa didn't actually know why. SOLDIER's medics were the healing materia they all wore; if you got hurt, you slapped cure on it until the hurt stopped. Wasn't like they got many diseases or infections.

( _You are not close enough to baseline humanity to suffer our illnesses,_ Lucrecia had said at dinner once, when Tifa had asked. _Though even among your stout kind, some are standouts, like my Aerith._ The way Aeris had beamed at that praise had been sweet to see...)

Sephiroth, satisfied, let out a long, shuddering sigh, then walked back to the kids, a little stiffly, like he'd pulled something.

He reached the kids and knelt down, a wince of pain on his face as he knelt.

“ Are you alright?” he asked gently. The girl nodded.

“ I'm- he got scraped, though,” she said, pointing to her brother, who just nodded, still hiding his face.

“ Alright, let's get you back somewhere safe for now,” Sephiroth said. “ I'll tend you when we get there. Tifa, would you carry them?”

“ Of course,” she said, unconsciously trying to wipe her hands off again. Sephiroth stood, went to his bag, and withdrew a few alcohol wipes, handing them to her.

“ These might be better than your shirt,” he said, voice tinged with amusement.

“ Thank you,” she said, rubbing down her hands and arms quickly. The alcohol sliced through the gore, gave her fairly clean hands, even as the white wipes were swiftly rendered pink from the blood.

( Sephiroth, watching from the corner of his eye as he closed his bag, remembered his mother's words about white and pink, and couldn't help but suppress a shudder.)

“ I... what do I do with these?” she asked. Sephiroth shrugged.

“ The area is already a dump,” he said. “ Might as well toss them down. I hate to do that, but it's not like this area's not already about as contaminated as it can get.”

Tifa nodded and chucked the used wipes before bending down.

“ Hey, I'm gonna pick you up, alright?” she told the kids. They nodded, and she picked them up and put them on her shoulders, the little boy burying his face again in her hair as he did so.

“ Let's go,” Sephiroth said, and the duo started heading back.

“ Won't we get attacked again? Surely that wasn't all of them,” Tifa said.

“ It wasn't, but Hedgehog Pies won't stay in an area where a King has died,” Sephiroth said. “ It panics them; they run, try to establish colonies elsewhere first. We'll be safe.”

They made it back, Sephiroth going in first, Tifa handing the kids to him like she was passing off a mail parcel before following herself.

“ Holy shit,” Oates said, having apparently made it back to the children's camp in the meantime. “ You are _covered_ in blood, lady.”

“ Oates, watch your language,” Sephiroth said, with the air of a man who knew it was hopeless.

Tifa shrugged at the kid, who was looking at her like she was the coolest person he'd ever met.

“ Sometimes you get messy fighting monsters,” she said.

“ Badass,” Oates opined. Sephiroth sighed and gave it up as a bad job as he knelt in front of the two kids.

“ Let's check you two over.”

As Sephiroth quickly checked the little girl, looking in her eyes and giving her a quick once-over to check for wounds, the little boy reached for Tifa's hand again. She let him hold it, gently squeezing. Poor little guy.

Sephiroth let her go a few moments later; she didn't have any wounds, or at least none he could address with his doctor's bag. He turned to the boy next as kids pressed on the girl, and she told them stories that rapidly escalated, the way stories always did in the mouths of children. The kid had a scrape on his leg, and the streaks left on his skin meant it was from rusty metal; Sephiroth cleaned the wound quickly with yet another alcoholic wipe, the kid sucking in a breath as it stung.

He squeezed Tifa's hand harder; she squeezed back gently.

“ You've got it,” she encouraged him.

Once the wound was clean, Sephiroth put a hand to his scythe and ran the other hand over the wound, hand glowing gently green as he softly prayed, a thin trail of fluid pouring from his fingers onto the wound.

“ Find the life that locks the jaw and the muscles, sacred poison, and kill it, cleanse him of what should not be in his veins...”

“ Are you poisoning him?” Tifa asked, quirking an eyebrow.

“ No,” Sephiroth said, glancing at her. “ Do you... not know how poison materia works? You were in the War, surely you saw medics at work.”

“ Yeah, but not up close. I was a SOLDIER,” Tifa protested. “ We just slapped cure on our wounds.”

“ And if that didn't work?” Sephiroth asked as he finished his spellwork.

“ We used more cure until it did.”

“ While I can't argue with the efficacy of brute force, for most people, poison materia is a necessity,” he said. “ With training and practice, it can be used to poison bacteria or viruses, giving it antibiotic and anti-viral properties. Since no one down here has been... vaccinated... against lockjaw, what I am doing here _should_ prevent him from getting it. It also won't have any knock-on effects, not used like this; it should only attack things that _shouldn't_ be inside him. Not perfect, but better than nothing.”

He looked a bit odd when he said vaccination, as if a memory was striking him... but Tifa, who knew all about that, said nothing. Let the man keep his secrets.

( He was thinking, _My father invented vaccines..._ but he didn't know what else to think, how to feel, about that fact, so he dismissed it and kept going.)

Once he was done, he pulled out bandages, ointment and a bottle of generalized antidote. “ The antidote you should drink in one hour, just in case you have an adverse reaction to the poison. And this ointment should keep other infections from getting in while you heal. I'll give the Leaf House a list of what I'm using; they can buy more with greater ease than I can.”

He dabbed the ointment on gently, then wrapped the scrape in a cloth bandage while the kid held the antidote.

“ Thank you,” the kid said, then turned and hugged Tifa's leg. “ Thank you too.”

“ It's nothing, little guy,” she said, some of her sense of shame diminishing. Regardless of how... out of control... she'd been, the monsters had deserved what they got, and she'd still saved the kids. She'd just have to watch that, in the future, and not get so angry she didn't know what she was doing til it was over.

“ Yeah, thanks,” the little girl said from nearby, emerging from the cluster of kids asking her what was going on. “ Umm, I... didn't get your name?..”

“ Tifa,” she said.

“ Thank you, Miss Tifa,” she said. “ For saving us.”

“ She your girlfriend?” Oates asked Sephiroth. “ Saw you with her earlier. Man, Ms. Folia's gonna be heartbroken.”

“ She's my bodyguard,” Sephiroth said, with some annoyance. “ You are a terribly observant child.”

“ It's what I do,” Oates said. “ Do we have to abandon our place here? Sounds like you killed them all.”

“ I didn't get all of them,” the reaper man said, “ but I killed the King. You should be safe, at least until Gwen can organize a hunt for the remnants.”

Oates nodded. “ Good.”

“ Though I advise all of you to disperse for today. It may take a few hours for the remaining pack members to realize the King is dead.”

A chorus of “awwwws” followed, but the kids complied, filing out through the gap in the wall. The two they'd rescued stayed, clinging close to them.

“ W-would you... I mean, my brother's scared, would you walk us back to the Leaf House?” the little girl asked, clearly scared herself but not willing to admit it.

“ Sure,” Sephiroth said, popping his scythe's blade back in and hooking his doctor's bag onto the end, like a hobo's bindle stick, gothic edition. He reached out with his other hand, and she took it gratefully.

“ Thank you! He gets scared,” she said, relieved.

“ You do too,” the little boy mustered up the strength to say.

“ Do not!”

“ Let's not argue,” Tifa said, a smile tugging at her face. The kids seemed to be recovering their good cheer, if their arguing was any indication.

“ Here we go,” Sephiroth said, and led them out.

( Watching from a nearby junkpile, Vicks put his scope down.. He'd debated jumping them in the junkyard... but they'd saved some of the orphans, so he had left them be. Didn't hurt that the woman had freaked him out, when the SOLDIER had fallen into a berserk rage... why did she look so damn familiar?)

Tifa followed, and they walked up to the Leaf House- albeit not without seemingly every person and their grandmother asking Sephiroth what had happened. He gave quick explanations, stating he wanted to get the kids back to the Leaf House first, and the crowd acquiesced as they pressed forward.

They reached the Leaf House in good time, to find Ms. Folia outside of it talking to the kids who'd reached their first; she ran over when she saw Sephiroth and Tifa.

“ Are they okay?” she asked in a panic.

Sephiroth nodded.

“ They need rest, but there is nothing physically wrong with them,” Sephiroth said.

“ Oh, you poor children,” the caretaker said, and took their hands. “ Let's get you cleaned up, and I'll get the housemother to make you something.”

“ I'd like cookies,” the boy said softly.

“ Cookies sound great,” the girl echoed her brother.

“ Sure, come on in,” Ms. Folia said, walking to the door. Before she entered, she paused and looked back at Tifa and Sephiroth.

“ Thank you,” she said. “ Thank you so much.”

“ It's no trouble,” Sephiroth demurred.

“ Glad to help,” Tifa said, surprising herself a little.

Ms. Folia gave her a bright smile before walking in.

“ Well, I'd love to say I'm shocked that your last day in town was so dramatic, but I'm not.”

Tifa turned to the new speaker, who was the fancily-behatted chariot driver she'd seen. Her wagon was a vast panoply, mostly designed to carry things, but it had seats up front and a plank hanging off the back that was wide enough for people to sit on.

“ Kyrie, this is Tifa, Tifa, Kyrie,” Sephiroth said, introducing them.

“ We've met, but you were unconscious, and also poor,” Kyrie said, sticking a hand out to Tifa before pulling it back at seeing the remnants of dead monster on her. “ A shame to try and rob someone with no gil. Quite the insult to my profession! Also, I'd shake your hand, but...”

“ No, I understand,” Tifa said. “ Sephiroth, if we've got a minute, I'd like to shower.”

“ Certainly,” Sephiroth said. “ It'll take us a few moments to get everything ready. Go on; I need to talk to Kyrie.”

“ Can't bodyguard you from a distance,” Tifa said.

“ The woman wakes up and you put her to work? Seph, you're a jerk,” Kyrie said with a grin.

“ I will be fine, Tifa. I can defend myself,” he said with a grin.

“ Turks are a far cry from monsters,” Tifa pointed out.

“ Stay if you want!” Kyrie said. “ I feel safer with a SOLDIER around, at least. So what's all this about Turks?”

The next thirty minutes passed swiftly. Sephiroth explained the situation; Kyrie agreed to help, without hesitation or fear. Kyrie introduced Tifa to her chocobo, Mirielle; an old bird, but still graceful and strong, warking quietly as Tifa rubbed her chin. She was like the farm chocobos back home, big and strong birds, good for hauling things; Tifa liked her immediately.

They went to their little garden, and Tifa got her shower, while Elmyra and Sephiroth did what they could with her clothes- which mostly amounted to running bleach on them and scrubbing the hell out of them, then using a borrowed fire materia from Kyrie to try and dry them swiftly. Not perfect, they were still damp, but good enough; she ended up looking alright, and not like a serial killer, so she had to call it even.

No Turks had attacked while she was scrubbing, either, so that worked out.

They loaded up Kyrie's wagon with their things- not too many of them. His mom had packed frugally and pragmatically for the both of them; Sephiroth only added a few books, particularly one about mako that he seemed to be rather protective of, as well as refilling his doctor's bag.

“ Alright, is everybody ready?” Kyrie asked when they were done.

“ Yep!” Elmyra said.

“ So... where are we going?” Kyrie asked. “ Your mysterious SOLDIER here never did tell us.”

“ Sector 7,” Tifa said, hoping Rufus wouldn't be too mad at her. “ We're going to Sector 7.”

“ That's funny,” Kyrie said. “ Just delivered a guy from there to Wall Market- dumbass wanted to try his luck at the Red Cup.”

_ Probably Johnny,  _ Tifa thought. 

“ So that's AVALANCHE's home... hmm. Wonder if the boss'll recognize me,” Kyrie said. “ I'm part of it myself, but I wasn't told where anybody was; smart, I guess, got to keep Shinra from finding out. I just do requested work for them, marking trails and stuff; I'm no fighter.”

Tifa thought about the Stamp graffiti in the tunnels, wondering if Kyrie had painted them, before dismissing it. How unlikely would that be?

“ Well, we know where we're going, and we know Turks are still after me,” Sephiroth said. “ Let's get out of here.”

Kyrie and Elmyra clambered up front. Elmyra turned to look behind her, raising her voice to yell. 

“ You two got room back there?”

Sephiroth and Tifa had ended up sitting on the wagon's back. She'd have preferred him to be up front for safety's sake, but he had declined, letting his mother take the more cushioned seat.

“ This is acceptable,” Sephiroth replied.

“ I'm alright,” Tifa answered. 

“ Then we're off!” Kyrie announced, and with a crack of the reins, the chocobo warked and set out to Sector 7.

_ I'll be home soon,  _ Tifa thought, and wondered about the look on Cloud's face when she got there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Yuffie.


	24. The Fire and the Ice and the Mistake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: animal death, fire, body horror
> 
> The unbearable Yuffieness of being; it's her first chapter.

**Chapter 22**

**The Fire and the Ice and the Mistake**

Nightmare enveloped her.

It hadn't started out that way. The dream had started out... sweet. Just a memory of those two weeks in Nibelheim, watching Aerith for Lucrecia, watching Tifa and Cloud too, because Aerith stuck to Tifa like glue and Tifa stuck to Cloud the same way. Just the three of them, Cloud and Tifa talking and liking what they heard, Aerith an awkward third wheel who was nonetheless doing her best to be enthusiastic for the two of them.

The memory blended with dream; Yuffie had watched from close, had listened to many of those conversations, and they all ran together into a halycon vision in her dream. She remembered Tifa showing Aerith her hometown; she remembered Tifa and Cloud laughing about a promise, long ago, and the soft way they looked in each other's eyes. She remembered Aerith's sheer discomfort with their closeness, standing nearby wringing her staff in her hands, looking for all the world like a puppy afraid of a kick- and wasn't that telling? She'd brought the weapon, even though this was a peaceful trip among friends. Five years of war did not wash off of anyone clean.

Still, Yuffie further remembered Aerith's sudden resolution, the way her wringing hands had stopped and her face had firmed up into a smile, as she made a decision somewhere inside; and from that point on, she'd encouraged Tifa to pursue Cloud. Two weeks had followed, of Tifa and Cloud dancing around each other in a slow waltz, remembering the children they had been, discovering the new people they had become, all with Aerith doing her best to play music for their dance from the sidelines.

It had been... nice, and seeing Aerith try to support Tifa in her off-putting, earnest way had been amusing. Yuffie recalled making a joke to herself at the time, about putting _that_ Aerith- clinging to her staff like a lifeline, constantly fidgeting like a dog getting yelled at- on a poster, instead of the impossibly perfect, calm professional that Shinra propaganda spread about.

It'd have been more accurate. Aerith might have been stronger than her, but Yuffie sure could deal with people a whole lot better. Aerith was  _weird_ , and everyone who wasn't blinded by her reputation realized that within five minutes of talking to her. 

You couldn't even blame it on her being part-Cetra; hell, Yuffie was the same way, now. Shit, Yuffie might be  _more_ than half-Cetra, considering all the things Lucrecia'd had to replace inside her.

( It privately pleased her, the idea she might be  _more_ of an heir to the Ancients than Aerith, the way all possible victories over Lucrecia's older child pleased her.)

But then...  _the fire and the ice_ .

She resisted. She was half-awake, lucid enough in her dream to know it was a dream, lucid enough to fight back. She resisted.

_The fire and the ice_

It wasn't enough.

Kicking and screaming, the nightmare took her anyway.

That night.

_The fire and the ice._

Jarring awake, not  _from_ the nightmare but  _inside it_ , the way she'd jarred awake that night in real life; her lucidity produced a weird double-result, she awoke in the nightmare and knew she'd awoken that night. She was just awake enough to follow the plot beats but not awake enough to  _stop_ them. 

The sound, first, always the sound.

The sound: the crackle of fire and the hiss of ice, combined in a sound so vast it nearly defied description, a roar of sound.

And beneath it, almost whispering in comparison, were the screams.

That sound, the roar buoyed on screams, bounced off the mountains, the echo rebounding it, making it worse, overlaying the original with itself again and again. It had carried to her hidden camp, and woke her, _was_ waking her in the dream. She had rolled out of her tent, stumbling, terrified, she had never heard a sound like that in all her days...

Over the edge of her encampment, Nibelheim beneath her, and oh, All-Sea, it was _beautiful._

Where the dull, quiet town had once nestled in the mountain's cradling grip, now there was only something gorgeous. It looked almost like a flower; it had great red petals, where the flame roared and raged, blossoming ever wider. They centered around a white dome, which her eyes only belated realized was a great swirling blizzard, a dome tinged pink as it reflected the light of the fires all around it.

It was beautiful.

( She wanted to puke. This was wrong, this was the thing that had haunted her for half a decade; it was _wrong,_ for something so awful to look so grand, for all that human hurt to seem so sweet. Poisoned eye candy, a witch's apple offered up for her eyes alone, and still she could not shake off how beautiful it had been to see.)

She had ran- she was running, in the dream- down, down to Nibelheim, once she'd shaken off the eerie glory of that vision and the last vestiges of her own sleep. Running, brambles, branches, catching her- not all, but a few, the woods packed so tight that even going transparent didn't protect her from everything.

She hadn't even realized she _was_ transparent, not for many steps. A reflex, to activate the safety Lucrecia had blessed her with, her subsconscious seeking safety; it was a sign of how overwhelmed she was that she hadn't even noticed.

Down, down the mountainside, tripping every few steps, catching herself, the urgent need to get down overpowering any sense of caution. She wasn't the only one racing across the stone that night; she met the first refugees just outside the town, a mass of human lives. Most had burn scars; many were carrying people so wounded that even Yuffie, who was no doctor, knew they would survive the night.

She'd paused, stared- cried, maybe- this looked like her people, this looked like Wutai fleeing the disaster on Shinra's airships in the documentaries she had obsessively watched while in Deepground, recovering from her surgeries. The desperation, the fear; the look in their eyes was the same.

( She cried again, in her sleep, soft helpless sobs.)

Then she'd shaken herself and in, in, pressing in against the tide, so much of Nibelheim trying to escape the flames. Closer to the town, close enough to see that the air was clashing where the frost met the flame, spinning, spinning until the merry tango between cold and heat gave birth to merry vortexes. They weren't quite full tornadoes, but they were big enough to suck up some of the fire, and carry it away, dancing a merry jig as they spread the flame ever-farther.

Some citizens tried to fight back, or rescue others. Hallucinogenic glances as she ran, stretched out in time by the dreaming recollection she was suffering through; a woman diving into a burning home to save another, a group bashing a door down with a burning timber to save the family trapped inside, a woman with a bucket of water, tossing it vainly on her storefront before giving up, using the bucket to break a window and let a trapped dog out before the fires could catch it.

Other citizens died, and the nightmare delighted in dragging those sequences out, those hellish glimpses of awful deaths. Faces in windows, clawing at the glass, already dying but still trying to get out; burning people running before her, screaming as they were reduced to ash. A cat, she remembered a cat in an attic, yowling before it leapt, burning, dead before it struck the ground.

Everything was happening, too fast, too fast. Buildings collapsed and the air was so full of screaming she couldn't even hear herself think, couldn't process anything but terror and urgency as she raced deeper into the flames, towards the ice- the ice, it had to be Aerith, only Aerith had the strength to make so much winter in the middle of all this flame. Aerith, Lucrecia's

( _older_ )

Daughter, the woman she had been charged with protecting.

And so she ran.

But getting to her... the fire, it was like a living thing. Yuffie knew there were dragons in Nibelheim's mountains, but the fire was a dragon of a whole different kind. It licked old houses and greedily gulped down storefronts, and with each breath it baked the air; it was so _hot_ , the air was crisped into an oven and every lungful she drew in cooked her lungs. It was _agony_. Cinders and ashes down her nose and into her chest, she couldn't _breathe_ , but still she forced her body to push in, press on, further, further.

Somehow, she reached the center. Somehow, she reached the white, swirling bubble of ice, covering the town's center, stark and surreal and lending this nightmare a dimension of fae strangeness. It was wet, here, where the heat melted the ice, but it was also breathable; the pressure released on her lungs. The cold made things more bearable here, weakened the fire's touch.

She was looking inside, seeing nothing more in the nightmare than she had in real life. Just the white... and deep inside, blazing, was a single red dot of _rage_.

She tried to get inside, put a hand to that white wall- and lost all of the fingers on her right hand. It hadn't hurt- too cold to hurt. Just... flash-frozen, then torn off by the whirling wind.

She hadn't even cursed. Too surprised, too overwhelmed. Cure materia, slapped to the wound, fingers regrowing, what was she to _do_?...

Then she saw him.

Cloud, unconscious, laying underneath the ruins of a home.. his _mother's_ home. His hand was outstretched towards a corpse, blackened and burned, and only his proximity to the ice had saved him... but it would not save him long. He lay there hurt, and the fire would kill him...

...He'd been trying to save his _mother._ Yuffie's heart had lurched in her chest.

( Her own mother, Kisaragi Kasumi, whom she barely recalled, killed by the same poison she had passed down to her daughter; even five years ago, her motehr had been a memory she couldn't quite recall, from those days before her father stopped coming to the hospital.)

She had paused, torn, a coin flipping in her head... Aerith, that was what Lucrecia wanted, and that was so important to her, but... but she couldn't go into the blizzard.

She _could_ save Cloud.

So she had made her choice.

She had saved him. She had ran there, to that scorched man, and she had poured elixir on his wounds- _elixir_ , Lucrecia was going to kill her for wasting it- grabbed him, lifted, ran. Ran, with muscles empowered by Tsiviet treatment and panic and adrenaline all three, and somehow, she pulled him alive out of Nibelheim.

She had reached the great mob of fleeing souls with him soon enough, and debated what to do next. Go back, and try again to breach the dome of ice...

But then, just as she was reaching a place to put Cloud down safely, the roar had echoed in the valley, a roar sharper than the roar of Nibelheim burning.

It had been her only warning before the great monster had descended from on high- a dragon, drawn by the noise. Perhaps the flames had made the territorial beast fear that another dragon had moved in; perhaps it had simply seen all that fleeing, screaming _meat_ and decided to feast.

She didn't really plan out her next action. Nibelheim's people had looked too much like the images she'd seen of her own, and in all the horror of the night, that connection stood out; these people were too much like the ones that her family had failed.

( She had not even been born when Wutai was ruined, but the responsibility still fell on her anyway; it had been her father who made the fateful decision. This sin was _hers_.)

She had to save them. She couldn't fight the fire, but she _could_ fight the dragon.

She had thrown Cloud onto a nearby man- who, thankfully, caught him on reflex- and then hurled herself at the beast. She had cut, and cut, and forced it back, away from the innocent, taunting it to draw it after her, belching fire all the way, slashing with those huge claws.

A foolish decision. She had almost no equipment on her. Most of her stuff was back at her camp. She had her backup kunai and a smattering of materia and Lucrecia's great gift, and that was it.

And somehow, somehow, it had been enough. She had killed the dragon. She didn't know how, but she had done it; the apex predator had died, blinded by daggers in its eyes, bleeding out from a thousand cuts.

She had always wondered what it had looked like, to the refugees- or if they had spared it a thought at all. The dragon was attacking them one moment, then an invisible force was striking at its eyes, forcing it back; perhaps they were simply grateful that salvation had found them. Perhaps they never even knew.

But fight it she had, and by the time she was done, it was near morning; and in the pitiless morning light, she went back to Nibelheim, to find Aerith, laying numb and empty on a new grave in the ruins of Nibelheim's cemetery.

Tifa's, Yuffie would find out later; she had burned her body to prevent Lucrecia from experimenting with it, and said something about returning Tifa's kindness towards Zack. Lucrecia had been furious with her- though she'd been oddly pleased with Yuffie's actions. Saving the Nibelheim folk was the right thing to do, according to her; dying in a disaster, to what was, effectively, bad _luck,_ was a waste of the potentially Worthy, and saving them had been the correct course of action.

It had been a sweetness to lessen the trauma, there at the end, to have the great woman's approval. She... She...

She was awake.

She'd been awake for a few moments, actually; she'd just been so submerged in herself that she hadn't noticed when the nightmare became merely recollection.

She rose up, shaking her head, throwing off the past.

_I'm too young to be so haunted,_ she thought to herself, meaning it as a joke, but she couldn't quite work up a grin. Between the hospital bed and the burning of Nibelheim, she had ghosts enough.

Stretching as she rose up, she rubbed at her purple mako eyes. She wore contacts in public most days, assisted by turning her eyes transparent so they didn't glow, but she'd never really gotten used to having something on her eyeballs. Always made them ache in the morning.

She stretched again, and ran her thoughts over today's tasks, pushing her past away. First, she needed to go to Wall Market; Cloud had went to the Red Cup while Yuffie was out, like a dumbass, and she needed to go bail him out. Watching over him was her main job- Aerith's little “request.” She wanted Cloud kept safe. Something about doing it for Tifa, which Yuffie understood, though she privately agreed with Lucrecia's irritation over the whole thing.

Still, a job was a job, and Aerith played her part in Lucrecia's great role. So long as she toed the line, Yuffie and her fellow Tsiviets would humor her.

( It felt good, to know that _she_ made no such silly demands of Lucrecia's time. It felt good, to be the great woman's favored subject, to know that she was paying her faithfully and in full for her great gifts. She was no ungrateful child.)

Her purple eyes swept lazily over her apartment as she rose up. The apartment was a small thing. This building was in a part of Sector Seven even the locals considered run-down, which was quite the accomplishment considering the competition. Such an empty building in the slums always ended up the target of drunks and drug addicts, but Yuffie had prepared by taking both a third-story room, and bringing in equipment to fortify the doors and walls; boards and nails across the back, alongside a few traps set with lightning materia. Nothing that would kill anyone, but a good shock that would prevent all but the most determined and insensate fools from bothering the room too heavily- and most such fools wouldn't climb to the top floor anyway, content to crash on the first.

Besides, the room didn't hold much for a thief to take, even if they did get in. Everything important was hidden away; her and Vincent had worked on it, building little hidden panels and safes, to store her equipment and needs. Her weapons, her armor, her materia, and all the survival gear she needed was here, as well as some restoratives.

( No elixir, though. Lucrecia had taken _that_ privilege from her after Nibelheim- which was fair, a potion probably would have sufficed.)

They'd offered to let her just use a home on the Plate, but she had demurred; no reason to strain their resources or take up more space than was needed. Even with the additional equipment they'd added, this apartment was far cheaper.

Seeing that all ws in order, she headed to her shower. Water had been cut off for this building some time ago, but she'd jury-rigged a survivalist's shower in the bathroom all the same, using specifically purified water she lugged in once a week. She blew a lot of her salary on the water, but it was necessary; you couldn't perform a proper Wutai prayer in filthy water.   
  


Into the shower, and she made her ablutions and her devotions both, letting the water wash over her as she prayed to Leviathan.

( _All-Sea, lord of Wutai, forgive my family our transgressions, and show me the way to restoring our name._ )

She hoped those words were the right things to say, that the pose she adopted was correct. These were things her mother should have passed down to her, but Yuffie had been born dying and weak, and her mother had never entirely recovered from the effort of pregnancy. Whatever her mother was meant to teach her had vanished with her death, and so Yuffie'd had to learn from priestesses in the slums... but even those things weren't the way _her_ family would have prayed.

( She'd felt half a tourist, having to ask strangers to teach her the holy tongue of her own people; but between her family's failure to pass it down to her, and having been raised by Midgardians in Deepground since her rebirth, she had simply not known any other way to learn.)

But perhaps that was good. Surely Leviathan was pissed as hell at her family; perhaps it would have been blasphemous, to propitiate the great god with the words and gestures of the family that had ruined his chosen people. It was why she'd never tried to reclaim her family sword from Cloud; if anyone on the Planet did _not_ have a right to the Masamune, it was her, and even Cloud's Nibelheim hands were a better candidate. His family, after all, had never ruined what they were meant to protect.

But she would make up for it. She let that thought wash through her, sluicing through the nightmare's debris. She'd make up for it.

Cleansed in body and spirit both, she left the shower, dried, and dressed in her gear. The undersuit first, the blue cloth thing layered with wires and all-materia that spread her unique Tsiviet powers to everything she wore; without it, her clothes and equipment wouldn't go transparent when she did. Her own preferred clothes above that, a red turtleneck and some comfy white shorts; she always felt like her throat was exposed if she wasn't wearing a turtleneck.

She also felt exposed without her long shield along her left arm, but it was too bulky for something like this. For heavy combat, that shield- which Lucrecia had improved upon- would be wonderful, along with the load of powerful materia it bore, but she wasn't going out on a hit today. For that same reason, her weaponry loadout was likewise sparse; a sheaf of kunai in a belt around her waist. Her great weapon, Conformer, would stay behind a hidden panel in the wall; no need for such heavy artillery today.

Instead, she simply grabbed her headbands, one white, one black, and folded them both over her glowing purple eyes. After a moment in darkness, there was light- connected to her, pumping direct visual information to her brain, alongside a load of information from the sensory materia woven into the wires. The abiltiy to see heat signatures, night vision in the dark, visual identification of any materia she saw- wondrous thing. No wonder Lucrecia had pushed Shinra to ban sensory materia, and restrict it to the military; a clever person could do more harm with a sensory materia and some thinking than a foolish person could with a summon.

All that, and the headbands even had a list of passcodes to Shinra technology, and included a wireless ID coded to the highest rank. Wonderful technology.

On top of it all, she threw her cloak, a simple, plain thing with a head designed like a puppet version of the Midgardian fairy tale creature, the moogle. It was a bit unsettling with its stitched mouth and weird, mismatched button eyes, particularly to a Westerner like her; it was just weird.

She loved it. It was just so _creepy._ Even Lucrecia had commented on how off-putting she found the cloak and hood, though Vincent had loved it. A good thing for an assassin to wear.

Ready, she turned transparent, a trick that was still fun, a decade of use later. A moment of weightlessness, of being removed entirely from the Planet's grip... and then she was present again, in a lesser form. Invisible to the eye, most undetectable even by other senses; sensory materia could find her, but only with great effort.

Wonderful.

Out the window, easily sliding down, then moving among the slums, even the sound of her footsteps faint and distant even before she bothered to put her stealth training to use. She moved through the world while barely disturbing it.

In such tranquility, she observed the slums, sneaking straight through the sunlight. It was high noon- or, at least, whatever artificial equivalent passed for it under the sunlamps- and most of the slum was empty. This was a day for work, after all, and few households had the privilege Plate dwellers had, to spare a member to stay home. Slum folk needed the money too badly, had to put anyone who could work _to_ work. The few adults still down here were mostly layabout men nursing hangovers, living off of their more productive women in the usual manner of parasites.

Still, the slums were far from empty. There were children out and about, since the slums had no public school- public education, never high on Shinra's list of priorities, had fallen right off the schedule since the War. Cloud had tried to establish a school, two years ago, but he'd failed; he couldn't get anyone with the requisite education to come.

( Good man. She'd asked Lucrecia to consider him as a Tsiviet candidate; she still had the Cerulean process yet to use. Lucrecia had agreed that Cloud was impressive, but she hoped to convert Barret to her cause; still, the great scientist had promised that, if Barret refused- as seemed likely- she would consider Cloud. He was the very _definition_ of Worthy.)

So in the absence of anywhere else to go, children swamped the streets. They played, kids doodling for games of hopscotch or petting cats or even, in a few cases, trying to punch each other out over some slight or other. All this was watched over by older children, those teenagers not quite old enough to get a job just yet. Shinra still pretended to have  _some_ decency, after all, and would reject anyone under 15- though if you looked older, they never really did bother to check. 

The teens watched the younger ones, simply watching them play, separating the fighting ones (or taking bets), and, for teens of a more philosophical bent, teaching any who would listen all kinds of things; sewing, how to tell good water from bad, and especially the various mechanical skills that Sector Seven prided itself on. Yuffie passed by as a silent observer to these informal apprenticeships, which substituted for the education the children deserved; knowledge passed from one to the next, oral traditions no one on the Plate knew existed, or would respect if they did.

Other teens, however, were of a more entrepreneurial bent. Most of the local businesses were shut down at this hour- they'd open up as work ended and the adults staggered back in- but that didn't mean there wasn't gil to be made. One Corelian teenager was selling sandwiches to the others, cooking what they called chopped cheeses on an old grill lugged out of the scrap piles during the Great Junkyard Scavenger Hunt.

( _Goddammit Johnny._ )

The grill, freshly cleaned and repaired to a working state by Sector Seven genius, sputtered cheerfully as the young chef cooked; handfuls of Shinra packaged and processed meat of indeterminate origin, mixed with the artificial thing that Shinra called cheese, diced together and then thrown onto slightly-stale bread, still fresh enough for the poor. They were doing a fine business; this was one to watch, already running a business at their age.

Yuffie took a sniff as she passed, and the smell was enticing, even diluted as it was by her transparency; after years spent living in the poor parts of Midgar, she'd gained a distinct appreciation for slum food. No, it didn't taste the best, could hardly compare with Plate food... but it had a rough, survivalist quality she found appealing. These slumdwellers were a lot like her own people; both had survived, despite horrible circumstances.

( If her father had never said yes, if the Reactor was never built... but so much would have changed, had that decision been different. Too much depended on it.)

Invisible, she strode across the slums, just walking.  Cloud was safe; they wouldn't do anything to him until she got there. No need to rush.

She was almost out before she saw one of Aerith's priests. Marco, the local Descendant preacher, was sitting on the steps of Cloud's currently closed pub, and he was cleaning what looked like an ordinary staff- an ordinary staff literally  _studded_ with chunks of materia. No full materia, but multiple green chunks.

Yuffie paused a second to look at it; that much materia interested her, and especially if it was in the hands of one of Aerith's transformed minions. She would never be as great a mage as Aerith, but materia could tip that battle in her favor- not that she  _needed_ to tip those scales, but... well. 

Lucrecia had a back-up plan if Aerith should decide to betray her, and Yuffie liked to think she knew her place in it.

( Some part of her relished the idea of that confrontation. At fourteen, she could not have beat her- but it had been five years, and Yuffie's power had only grown. Aerith was strong, but she hadn't had a serious fight in years... Yuffie would prove Lucrecia right, after all her great deeds, and show Aerith that she was the superior successor.)

Those pleasant thoughts percolated through the teenager's mind as she looked at the Descendant, before she reminded herself that she had business to deal with today.

She carried on, out Sector 7's gates, heading towards Wall Market along the ruined walkway.

( And behind her, Marco's eyes followed her, and his messiah watched through his blank pupils.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:
> 
> Yuffie is a semi-SOLDIER here because that was her original concept. Her purple eyes are there because there's a dissonance where she has purple eyes in her concept art, but dark brown in-game; this is my way of using that. Further, her red outfit with white shorts was an old concept art of her, before they switched to green shirt and tan shorts.
> 
> Hope ya'll enjoy!


	25. The Prodigal SOLDIER

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A return... and a new decision. Not one of the Seven, but just as important, maybe; a fulcrum on which the fate of the world turns.

**Chapter 24**

**The Prodigal SOLDIER**

The Wasteland was... wrong.

Tifa had noticed that the air in Midgar tasted a bit wrong, that everything felt a bit off, but she'd attributed that to being in the slums and the general shift in her life from high-flying, beloved SOLDIER to poverty-stricken random mercenary. 

But Sephiroth's garden, his little spot of green, had been right, had been the first place in all Midgar that felt right; the awe she'd felt at that bubble of life, that had been part of it, that sense of correctness. 

But out here, where Shinra's assault on the Planet was at its most obvious, that sense of wrongness was overwhelming once again; here, here was where the world's murder began. The Wasteland was just the scar.

_ I helped make this, _ Tifa thought in despair.  _ I fought for this. _

Then, worse,  _ The people I trained... they died for this. _

( flashes of memory, disjointed things- desperate assaults, firefights, her precious little SOLDIERs dying, like losing her kids, every time, they were so young, the bright fire flash of  _ rage  _ as she watched them die and wanted nothing more than  _ revenge _ )

“ Miss Lockhart?”

The voice came from far away. 

Very far away.

Tifa shook, and with more will than she liked to admit, pushed aside the heavy weight of all the lives she'd failed to save, and returned to the world of the living.

“ Yes?” she managed, turning to Sephiroth, the farm boy stuck on the wagon's back with her.

“ Are you... alright?” he asked, looking at her with concern.

Her muscles were tensed up, ready to pounce... and to her surprise, she saw a flicker of electricity around her knuckles, where her materia was stored, reacting unconsciously to the inner fury that had been building up.

_ Calm down, calm down. No one here deserves to get their skull punched in. _

“ Sorry,” she said. “ I... the Waste disturbs me.”

“ Me too,” he said. “ This is... I can't hear the Planet, here. That doesn't feel like it should be possible...”

“ But you're still on it,” Tifa protested. “ This is still Gaia.”

“ The Planet isn't its physical shell,” the healer said, shaking his head. “ The Planet- the being we call that name, anyway- is the flow of mako across it, the energy of all souls, the sum total of all life lived here.”

“ I... don't know what to say to that,” Tifa said quietly. “ But I hope you're wrong.”

“ Why?” he asked, a bit surprised.

“ Because if it is, then I helped to kill it,” she said, almost biting the words out. All this, this is what her trainees died for, what all her apprentices had given their lives for- she didn't know  _ why  _ she hadn't been thinking about this, why this hadn't been her  _ first fucking thought  _ when she got to the slums, but now it was all she could think about...

The  _ crackle  _ of lightning across her hand brought her back.

“ Don't feel guilty,” Sephiroth offered. “ How old were you when you joined, Tifa? Fifteen?”

“ Fourteen, actually,” Tifa said. “ Seven months underage. No one cared once I qualified for SOLDIER.”

“ Just a kid,” Sephiroth said. “ Not your fault. We all do stupid shit as teenagers.”

“ All my fault,” Tifa said... but some part of her knew he had a point, even if she didn't want to acknowledge it. “ I... I  _ did  _ this, Sephiroth. My stupid teenage shit was fighting for monsters, killing for them- and my propaganda work, how many people did I convince to  _ die  _ for them, or to kill, how many people did I convince...”

She snapped shut. Too many words. Too much like Old Tifa, she was vomiting her heart out and it was too much. She growled, wanted to hiss like a pissed cat, wanted to punch someone, wanted to do  _ anything  _ but sit here and realize what she'd done.

“ You can't change what you've done,” the younger man said, gently. “ All you can do is change today. This wound isn't insurmountable. Not yet. We  _ can  _ fix it.”

“ It's getting worse,” came a voice from behind them. Tifa half-turned in her seat, but had to lean out to see any sign of their driver, Kyrie, past her gigantic wagon. The girl's back was turned, letting the wind take her voice back to her passengers. “ It's past Kalm's old borders now. You know how Kalm became a big city, wrapped all around that river and big natural harbor they've got? It's because they had to; the Waste was growing too fast. The Traveler River's stopped it so far, but everyone knows it's just a matter of time.”

“ Course it is,” Elmyra opined, from her seat next to Kyrie. “ Shinra just keeps growing, after all. Like cancer.”

More death, spreading like a wine stain on a map, all from the city she'd supported, from the company she'd worshiped...

A hand on her shoulder, and a friendly squeeze.

Sephiroth smiled at her.

“ We can still stop it,” he said. “ The Planet would not be bothering me so strongly if we couldn't. It loves AVALANCHE- and it led me to you. Trust me; we can stop this.”

AVALANCHE... they'd stopped some of this already. Two Reactors down. More, if they had help- and while Tifa only had one skillset, it was the exact one they needed.

Maybe if she joined them... but...

_ I'm just a mercenary.  _ New Tifa, safe Tifa, the Tifa that wanted no part of a world that had hurt her, so very often.

_ I can be so much more.  _ Old Tifa, brave Tifa, the Tifa that wanted to save the world she had hurt so very badly.

Hard to trust a voice that had led her wrong once before... but looking all around her, at the Waste...

It made her angry, angry in a way that- if she was being honest-  _ scared  _ her, and she didn't want to be angry like that.

If she could fix this... make up for it, somehow...

She wouldn't have to be angry. Not in this... horrible, wildfire kind of way, where all the horrible things she'd seen in the War blinded her to the world around her.

She was silent, for the rest of the trip, as they all were; the air was too heavy, too oppressive, to do anything else. The trip took two hours, on which nothing happened. It would have been better if it  _ had _ ; but there was just the wind, and the sound of dying things, and a sensation of crawling wrongness. 

So in absence of other things, Tifa thought... and thought... and thought. Old Tifa, and New, and New Tifa, and Old, and from time to time a crawling sensation in her veins, weak and easily ignored.

( a voice she almost heard, in the tongue of an old friend- but then it was gone, and she did not know what choice it supported, could not hear it.)

And somewhere out in the Waste, in the midst of all that silence and death, Tifa made a decision.

When they finally re-entered Midgar, some of the oppressive feeling abated. All the artificial energy and materia of Midgar helped combat the sterile waste outside its doors; to Sector Seven, past the world's most incredibly depressing playground.

“ That's... that's sad in ways I didn't know things could be sad,” Kyrie said as they passed Evergreen Park.

“ It's nightmarish, is what it is,” Elmyra opined. “ I'd like to say it was used more back in the day, but honestly, that'd be a lie; everybody's  _ always  _ known that place was just the worst. I always felt like that bear slide was watching me every time I walked past it, back before we could use the Train Graveyard to get home. My husband used to tease me by claiming we'd have to come here with Sephiroth, but I spared him that trauma. Would'a warped him up right good.”

“ I am terribly grateful,” Sephiroth deadpanned.

“ Eh, growing up with you for a mom warped him pretty bad anyway,” Kyrie snarked.

“ Eh, he grew up better than you, I'll call it even,” Elmyra said, prompting the chocobo driver to laugh as they entered the gate.

“ Park here,” Tifa said. “ No need to draw more attention than we will.”

“ Smart idea. Besides, I got paying work to get back to,” Kyrie said, pulling to a stop. Tifa hopped off the back, as did Sephiroth.

“ Oh, I should- sorry, we didn't work out costs,” Sephiroth said as he hopped off the back and headed to the front, reaching for the left-hand pocket of his overalls. “ I've got some gil, though.”

Kyrie waved him off, and spoke to him quietly, leaning out to do so. “ No, this work... this is AVALANCHE work. I don't get paid for AVALANCHE work; at least, not in any coin you can carry. Just... make'em pay, okay? Make Shinra pay for my grandma and for everyone else they've hurt.”

“ I will,” Sephiroth promised his friend, as Tifa saw Elmyra needing help to get down. Sephiroth shook his friend's hand, the promise made into a solemn oath by silent agreement, as Tifa offered her own hand to his mother.

“ Thanks, girly,” Elmyra said, as Tifa helped her lower down. “ That ride about rattled my bones into a new shape; remember when I could walk this... getting old's not much fun.”

Tifa didn't know what to say to that, so she didn't say anything, just shrugged.

“ So you guys head on,” Kyrie said to them as she leaned back in her seat and adjusted her fancy hat. “ I got to get back to Chocobo Bill's, but I'll stick around a few minutes until I hear back from you guys. Just pop by and tell me it worked out, or come running if you need to mosey on out!”

_ Who says mosey? _ Tifa thought briefly. 

“ Thank you, Kyrie,” Sephiroth said, before turning to the SOLDIER. “ Where are we heading, Tifa?”

“ Follow me,” she said, and into town they went.

The slums were full of kids, but no adults; it was still an hour before anybody usually got back from work. The only one they passed was Marco, the Descendant Preacher who was heading out in the direction of the Train Graveyard- he sent a smile to Tifa, but a frown at Sephiroth.

“ Friendly guy,” Elmyra opined sarcastically.

“ He usually is,” Tifa protested, wondering what Sephiroth had done to the man. Weird.

( Something in Sephiroth crawled- warned him- something dangerous here... felt cold... but it didn't feel like the Planet, it felt like his other senses... but then it was gone as the Descendant left, and he didn't have time to parse it out.)

But the pub- closed, of course- was their destination. Tifa went up the steps with a light air, and knocked; Cloud would be here, he didn't  _ have  _ another job.

But the blonde man who opened the door wasn't the one she expected.

“ We're clos...” he began, then paused, gaping, gawking, staring.

“ Hi, Rufus,” Tifa said, and smiled.

Rufus blinked, then rubbed his eyes quickly with his remaining hand.

“ Wha- Tifa?” he asked as he finished.

From behind him, in the darkness of the closed bar, a familiar voice called out.

“ Boss? Did you just say Tifa?”

“ He did, Reno,” Tifa said, calling into the bar. “ It's me. I'm alive.”

“ No fucking way! Boss, move, let her in!”

Rufus stepped aside, still stared, and that was... that was funny, and sweet, to see this stoic and reserved man so shocked, so surprised. It was clear from the expression on his face that he was failing to process what he was seeing; Tifa stepped inside, out of the light and into the dark, and as her eyes adjusted she took in the bar.

Rude, behind the counter. Elena drinking at the bar, with Reno; no Cloud, he must have been out doing something. An impromptu meeting; good, great, better than perfect. She could introduce Sephiroth now, get that done.

“ Tifa, how the fuck are you- Tifa!” Elena started, almost falling out of her chair, friendly words slurred by drink. “ You fell off the Plate?!?”

“ I did,” Tifa said. “ And I lived.”

“ Bullshit, what, did you land on Heidegger? We heard he got pretty roughed up on landing,” Reno offered as he stood up from the bar, wavering, but only a little.

Tifa shook her head. “ Wasn't me.”

Rude, meanwhile, was staring, and had the faintest tinge of blush on his cheeks.

“ It's... it's good to see you alive,” the understated man offered, and his little crush was so sweet to see that Tifa offered a full smile, just for him.

“ It is,” she said. “ And I bring the man who healed me.”

She stepped aside, and presented him with an uncharacteristic flourish of her hands; but she felt good, this felt  _ right,  _ her smile just kept growing. Sephiroth strode in, right on cue, holding his closed scythe and drawing up to his full height, in all his black attire looking like the Grim Reaper, come for the harvest.

“ I am Sephiroth Faremis Gainsborough,” he told the gathered group a bit stiffly, lending the words a sense of weight. “ And I am here to join AVALANCHE.”

“ I... wait,” Rufus said, blinking rapidly and letting out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. “ Wait, Tifa- how-”

“ He healed me,” she said. “ After I hit every board in his church. It broke my fall- and he healed me over the next few days.”

“ I... I... okay,” Rufus said, still clearly reeling but trying to roll with the punches. “ Okay. How do we know he's trustworthy?”

“ He saved my life,” Tifa said.

“ Good enough for me!” Reno announced.

“ And he saved mine,” came Rude, unexpectedly, looking at Rufus. “ The healer out in Sector 8, the guy with long white hair- I told you about him. A few years ago.”

“ Double good enough for me!” Reno followed up.

“ I remember you,” Sephiroth said to Rude. “ I knew you were AVALANCHE, but I did not know you were part of the core cell.”

“ I owe you one, this deadbeat's my only good friend,” Reno said. 

“ What about me?” Elena said.

“ I said  _ good _ , Elena!”

As Elena tried to smack Reno- and failed miserably- Rufus' eye twitched.

“ Planet,” Rufus plead- almost prayed, clearly a bit overwhelmed and hoping for divine assistance. “ I... Tifa, I thought you were  _ dead _ .”

“ I almost was,” she said. “ But I'm back.”

“ Fuck yeah you are!” Reno burst out as he held Elena off with one hand. “ Oh man, shit, Tifa! I can't  _ believe  _ it!”

“ I couldn't either,” she said, laughing. “ I couldn't either.”

“ Neither could I,” Elmyra said, walking out from behind her son. “ Figured anybody that fell would be a pancake, Gaia knows I've seen it happen often enough... but she  _ is  _ a 1 st Class SOLDIER. Maybe gravity likes her.”

“ Who are you, ma'am?” Rufus asked, voice just barely not squeaking. Tifa, whose grin just  _ stayed _ , whose face was starting to hurt from all this unexpected smiling, took pity on him.

“ This is Elmyra Gainsborough, Sephiroth's mother,” she said. “ She's here to help, too.”

“ Not fighting material,” Elmyra said, “ but I've got nothing better to do. Can cast cure spells if'n you got the materia and I'm not half-bad at domestic shit, and everybody needs somebody back home to watch your shit. Used to be a decent fighter, but then I got old- but what the hell, I can pick up weapons again if I have to. Though if you're throwing me on the frontlines, you're in worse shape than I thought. Still, always did want to throw a bomb at Shinra.”

“ A moment,” Rufus asked and begged both, holding up a hand. After a second, he said, “ Okay. I... accept you both, why not. Why  _ not _ . This is too- this is too weird to be an infiltration. Welcome to AVALANCHE, both of you.”

“ I know why you survived,” Elena said, grinning as she managed to slide over and away from Reno, shooting Tifa two finger guns that were completely misaimed at Sephiroth and air, respectively. “ You're a mercenary! You came back to get the other half of your pay! You had to get your gil!”

She grinned big, clearly meaning it as a joke- but that was  _ such  _ a nice segue, Tifa had to take it.

“ Actually, no,” she said. “ Rufus, you get to keep your money.”

“ I do?” he said, surprised all over again just as he was reaching stability.

“ He do?” Elena echoed dizzily.

“ Yes,” Tifa said. “ Because... I'm joining, too.”

“ Really? But you were so insistent on the whole mercenary thing!” Reno said.

“ I was,” she said. “ But all this... this has to stop. So I'm in.”

“ Tifa... thank you,” Rufus said.

“ Maybe our luck's turning around,” Rude said from behind the counter. “ We were down a man, but now we're up by three; and she can help us get Cloud back.”

It was like ice water over her head, to hear that.

“ What's happened to my Cloud?” she asked, without entirely realizing what she'd said, what it  _ meant _ .

“ He's in Wall Market,” Rufus said, all business now that he was back on familiar ground. “ Taken by the Red Cup Colosseum. He'll be in fights starting tomorrow. We need to rescue him... but the Wings work for Shinra, or at least, I think they do. I can't risk going.”

“ But a dead woman and an unknown can go,” Sephiroth mused. “  _ We  _ are not known associates, at least, not if Tifa disguises herself... and they won't be looking for her anyway. Tifa's dead, after all.”

“ Tell me when,” Tifa growled.

“ Let's plan it out, then,” Rufus said. “ But that's not a bad idea, new guy. Let's see what we can do...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Waste is worse because Midgar has been in operation for five more years than in canon FF7- remember, our timeline is closer to Advent Children than FF7 proper, due to the timeline shifts. Midgar being in operation for five more years has had some seriously deleterious effects on the world.
> 
> The massive river that runs next to Kalm I've named the Traveler River, after the Kalm Traveler who shows up in international versions to give you the Underwater Materia and some useless items if you trade in the stuff you kill Ruby and Emerald for, which feels as pointless as it sounds.

**Author's Note:**

> Been on an FF7 kick recently and had this idea! Tifa's my favorite character, and I thought... you know what would be cool as shit?... and here we are!
> 
> Hope you guys like this! I'll reference the REMAKE but I won't spoil too much about it; this will mostly follow the plot of the original game.
> 
> Hope ya'll have fun! Leave a comment if you like!


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